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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10477 ***
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+MARY PORTER LORD,
+
+WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION
+
+AS A DEVOTED WIFE
+
+ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE
+
+OF HISTORICAL LABORS,
+
+This Work
+
+IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
+
+
+In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the "Beacon Lights
+of History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+"Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.
+
+The "Old Pagan Civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+"Ancient Achievements" and "Imperial Antiquity," the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+"Antiquity" and begins the "Middle Ages."
+
+NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.
+
+Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.
+
+The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.
+
+Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.
+
+I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.
+
+Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.
+
+And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.
+
+JOHN LORD.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+Ancient religions
+Christianity not progressive
+Jewish monotheism
+Religion of Egypt
+Its great antiquity
+Its essential features
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism
+Egyptian deities
+The worship of the sun
+The priestly caste of Egypt
+Power of the priests
+Future rewards and punishments
+Morals of the Egyptians
+Functions of the priests
+Egyptian ritual of worship
+Transmigration of souls
+Animal worship
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews
+Assyrian deities
+Phoenician deities
+Worship of the sun
+Oblations and sacrifices
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism
+Religion of the Persians
+Character of the early Iranians
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion
+Zoroaster
+Magism
+Zend-Avesta
+Dualism
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+Religions of India
+Antiquity of Brahmanism
+Sanskrit literature
+The Aryan races
+Original religion of the Aryans
+Aryan migrations
+The Vedas
+Ancient deities of India
+Laws of Menu
+Hindu pantheism
+Corruption of Brahmanism
+The Brahmanical caste
+Character of the Brahmans
+Rise of Buddhism
+Gautama
+Experiences of Gautama
+Travels of Buddha
+His religious system
+Spread of his doctrine
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism
+Nirvana
+Gloominess of Buddhism
+Buddhism as a reform of morals
+Sayings of Siddârtha
+His rules
+Failure of Buddhism in India
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans
+Greek myths
+Greek priests
+Greek divinities
+Greek polytheism
+Greek mythology
+Adoption of Oriental fables
+Greek deities the creation of poets
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods
+The Olympian deities
+The minor deities
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state
+Augustine view of heathen deities
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia
+Greek festivals
+No sacred books among the Greeks
+A religion without deities
+Roman divinities
+Peculiarities of Roman worship
+Ritualism and hypocrisy
+Character of the Roman
+Authorities
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+Early condition of China
+Youth of Confucius
+His public life
+His reforms
+His fame
+His wanderings
+His old age
+His writings
+His philosophy
+His definition of a superior man
+His ethics
+His views of government
+His veneration for antiquity
+His beautiful character
+His encouragement of learning
+His character as statesman
+His exaltation of filial piety
+His exaltation of friendship
+The supremacy of the State
+Necessity of good men in office
+Peaceful policy of Confucius
+Veneration for his writings
+His posthumous influence
+Lao-tse
+Authorities
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks
+Early progress of philosophy
+The Greek philosophy
+The Ionian Sophoi
+Thales and his principles
+Anaximenes
+Diogenes of Apollonia
+Heraclitus of Ephesus
+Anaxagoras
+Anaximander
+Pythagoras and his school
+Xenophanes
+Zeno of Elea
+Empedocles and the Eleatics
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher
+Progress of scepticism
+The Sophists
+Socrates
+His exposure of error
+Socrates as moralist
+The method of Socrates
+His services to philosophy
+His disciples
+Plato
+Ideas of Plato
+Archer Butler on Plato
+Aristotle
+His services
+The syllogism
+The Epicureans
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus
+The Stoics
+Zeno
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy
+Philosophy among the Romans
+Cicero
+Epictetus
+Authorities
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+Mission of Socrates
+Era of his birth; view of his times
+His personal appearance and peculiarities
+His lofty moral character
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents
+The Sophists
+Neglect of his family
+His friendship with distinguished people
+His philosophic method
+His questions and definitions
+His contempt of theories
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science
+The Ionian philosophers
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day
+Superiority of moral truth
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity
+The "daemon" of Socrates
+His idea of God and Immortality
+Socrates a witness and agent of God
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings
+Unjust charges of his enemies
+His unpopularity
+His trial and defence
+His audacity
+His condemnation
+The dignity of his last hours
+His easy death
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus
+Posthumous influence
+Authorities
+
+
+PHIDIAS.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+General popular interest in Art
+Principles on which it is based
+Phidias taken merely as a text
+Not much known of his personal history
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor
+Definitions of the word "Art"
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace
+The glory and dignity of art
+The connection of plastic with literary art
+Architecture, the first expression of art
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces
+General features of Grecian architecture
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+  Gothic architecture
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture
+Superiority of Greek sculpture
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+  distinguished men
+The great sculptors of antiquity
+Their ideal excellence
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt
+Its gradual development in Greece
+Famous Grecian painters
+Decline of art among the Romans
+Art as seen in literature
+Literature not permanent without art
+Artists as a class
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power
+Authorities
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS.
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry
+Homer
+Greek lyrical poetry
+Pindar
+Dramatic poetry
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes
+Roman poetry
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal
+Perfection of Greek prose writers
+History: Herodotus
+Thucydides, Xenophon
+Roman historians
+Julius Caesar
+Livy
+Tacitus
+Orators
+Pericles
+Demosthenes
+Aeschines
+Cicero
+Learned men: Varro
+Seneca
+Quintilian
+Lucian
+Authorities
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+Agapè, or Love Feast among the Early Christians _Frontispiece_
+_After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle_.
+
+Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris
+_After the painting by E.F. Bridgman_.
+
+Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal
+_After the painting by Henri Motte_.
+
+Apollo Belvedere
+_From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome._
+
+Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin
+_From a photograph_.
+
+The School of Plato
+_After the painting by O. Knille_.
+
+Socrates Instructing Alcibiades
+_After the painting by H.F. Schopin_.
+
+Socrates
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
+_After the painting by Hector Le Roux_.
+
+Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+  of Helen
+_After the painting by E. Pagliano_.
+
+Homer
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Demosthenes
+_From the statue in the Vatican, Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.
+
+The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?
+
+I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.
+
+The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.
+
+It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.
+
+But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.
+
+I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.
+
+The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.
+
+But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
+
+The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.
+
+The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.
+
+Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of
+beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.
+
+But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.
+
+But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.
+
+No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his "City of God," his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.
+
+We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the
+body." On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.
+
+Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.
+
+The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.
+
+The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
+
+One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.
+
+The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.
+
+"The worst form of this animal worship," says Rawlinson, "was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease."
+
+Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.
+
+The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.
+
+This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
+kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.
+
+These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.
+
+Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, "the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation." The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.
+
+In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. "In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the
+day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--"the
+prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.
+
+All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.
+
+There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, "the eldest son of Heaven," the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all
+beings," etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the
+great Hero," "the King of battles." He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+"teaches and instructs."
+
+There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.
+
+The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.
+
+An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.
+
+While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the "Father of all the gods," "the Ancient
+of days," reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.
+
+The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.
+
+With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.
+
+Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.
+
+It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.
+
+The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. "The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
+
+Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
+plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity."
+
+The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.
+
+There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.
+
+There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.
+
+The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gâthâs,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
+
+As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.
+
+Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
+spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.
+
+These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.
+
+Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
+says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gâthâs. "I worship,"
+said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.
+
+"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
+
+The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.
+
+Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
+
+The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
+
+Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.
+
+Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
+
+The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
+
+From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max MĂĽller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.
+
+The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
+
+It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.
+
+Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
+
+Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
+
+It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from MĂĽller's
+"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--
+
+"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created."
+
+But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.
+
+[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]
+
+As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.
+
+It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
+Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.
+
+In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
+who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal."
+
+[Footnote 3: Rawlinson, p. 121.]
+[Footnote 4: Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.]
+[Footnote 5: MĂĽller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.]
+
+In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.
+
+Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--"an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires."
+
+This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.
+
+The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.
+
+In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--
+
+"To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness."
+
+Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. "From his high birth," says Menu, "a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.
+
+But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.
+
+But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.
+
+     "He who through knowledge or religious acts
+     Henceforth attains to immortality,
+     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee."
+
+Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on "The Blood Covenant," thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.
+
+Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. "We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry." This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.
+
+Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.
+
+But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.
+
+In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
+
+Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the "Enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called Sâkyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the Sâkyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of Sâkya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.
+
+The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Siddârtha, or "the perfection of all
+things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.
+
+At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.
+
+On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, "I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed."
+
+This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.
+
+The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddârtha as yet is not the
+"enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.
+
+Siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.
+
+Siddârtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the BĂ´dhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.
+
+Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.
+
+The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.
+
+Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.
+
+It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
+
+Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
+
+Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.
+
+From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
+
+Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its
+emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+"body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism,"
+"a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic."
+
+Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!
+
+But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
+
+Hence the prince Siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
+
+"Let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others." He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. "As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings," said Gautama, "let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me."
+
+These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is "Quietism," without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.
+
+Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God." He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.
+
+Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
+
+"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites." The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.
+
+It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+MĂĽller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sákoontalá;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la VĂŞda; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
+
+The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.
+
+These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.
+
+This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.
+
+Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source."
+
+Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.
+
+In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.
+
+The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.
+
+Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.
+
+Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.
+
+Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.
+
+Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.
+
+Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.
+
+Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.
+
+Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.
+
+Artemis (Roman Diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo." She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.
+
+Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.
+
+Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.
+
+Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.
+
+Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.
+
+Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.
+
+The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.
+
+He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.
+
+Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the "Arabian Nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.
+
+As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.
+
+On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, "The City of God," he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.
+
+But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.
+
+If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.
+
+The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.
+
+Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--
+
+     "All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,
+     Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;
+     But, animate with deity alone,
+     In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."
+
+If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other "divine" productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.
+
+It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.
+
+Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.
+
+The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The "heathen Chinee" fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.
+
+The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.
+
+This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man." In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.
+
+That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.
+
+It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.
+
+And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.
+
+It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.
+
+There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the _Penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a _Lar_, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.
+
+The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.
+
+The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.
+
+Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.
+
+If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.
+
+If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of
+the world"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max MĂĽller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+Döllinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.
+
+
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+550-478 B.C.
+
+About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.
+
+"Confucius" is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.
+
+We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.
+
+But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.
+
+To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. "Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'"
+
+Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.
+
+At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.
+
+At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.
+
+On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.
+
+These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.
+
+But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.
+
+In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.
+
+At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.
+
+The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.
+
+In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said,
+"Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?"
+
+The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.
+
+Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, "I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker." If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.
+
+Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.
+
+And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+"superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied,
+"Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit." Again he said, "It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail." The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'" Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant." Thus he talks like Solomon.
+"Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'" Of a virtuous prince, he said: "In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just."
+
+It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: "It is to be heard of through the family and State." The master
+replied: "That is notoriety, not distinction." Again he said: "Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?" Again, "If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?" There is great force in this
+saying: "The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease." A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: "He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland." And, "The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "If a man," he said,
+"take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand." And again, "He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: "Specious words confound virtue." "Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "Virtue," the master
+said, "is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue." This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "There are three
+things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness."
+
+I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+"I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration." Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, "If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?" The master replied: "I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat." Here something like wit and irony break
+out: "A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'"
+
+When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: "Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted." When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: "Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents." "But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?" asked the duke. "Raise to office those whom you do know," The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "The art of
+government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?" This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal." This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.
+
+Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: "It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right." Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: "It is to love all men." Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: "Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself." This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+"Cast not your pearls before swine." There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: "What do you say about the treatment of injuries?" The master
+answered: "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness." Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount "When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again."
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: "The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: "Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented."
+
+Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.
+
+The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.
+
+Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner"
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.
+
+Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The "superior man," who next to
+the "sage" holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.
+
+In "The Great Learning" Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. "Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness."
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous."
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.
+
+The next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the
+person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.
+
+The height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "Happy,"
+says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers."
+
+While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.
+
+But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. "Friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick." One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends."
+
+Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. "No virtue," said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+"is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men." When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, "Enrich them;" and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, "Teach them." On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.
+
+Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.
+
+The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+"Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." Here
+we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.
+
+As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "I am,"
+said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.
+
+The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+"Book of Changes" (Yin-King), the "Book of Poetry" (She-King), the "Book
+of History" (Shoo-King), the "Book of Rites" (Le-King), the "Great
+Learning" (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+"Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of
+conduct, and the "Confucian Analects" (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!
+
+No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--"The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius." No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.
+
+This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.
+
+Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+
+Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.
+
+The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.
+
+Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!
+
+In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.
+
+We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.
+
+     "And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
+     Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark
+     Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea."
+
+He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "Philosophy," it has
+been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.
+
+Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.
+
+Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. "For," says he, "man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+_intelligence_. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: "It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute."
+
+Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. "If Anaximenes," says Maurice, not very clearly, "discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all." To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. "From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion," says Archer Butler, "Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas."
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.
+
+Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but
+rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.
+
+In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that _The Infinite_ is the origin of all
+things. He used the word _[Greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+"elements" could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+_deduction_. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.
+
+This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres."
+
+Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of _Kosmos_.
+
+Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.
+
+Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that _number_ is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. "It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him."
+
+We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.
+
+The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--
+
+     "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
+     As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
+     Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
+
+And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--
+
+     "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
+     And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;
+     But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
+     Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
+
+Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+_One_, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.
+
+Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_;
+the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
+
+Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.
+
+Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.
+
+Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "To
+philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity."
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.
+
+Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.
+
+This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.
+
+These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
+
+The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
+
+Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
+angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk."
+
+Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
+
+So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.
+
+These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.
+
+The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre."
+
+Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
+
+It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
+contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
+
+"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics."
+
+Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
+
+Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
+
+"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
+
+That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
+
+The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
+
+These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...
+
+Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.
+
+The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
+
+"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement."
+
+He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
+
+"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy."
+
+There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.
+
+With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.
+
+Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
+
+Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
+_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.
+
+Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
+
+Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.
+
+The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
+
+"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist."
+
+The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
+
+The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.
+
+Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
+and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.
+
+Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.
+
+With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
+fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
+
+The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.
+
+Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.
+
+Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
+
+The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.
+
+But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.
+
+Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
+
+There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
+
+Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
+
+Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.
+
+Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
+
+If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.
+
+The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.
+
+Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
+admiration.
+
+Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
+
+We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
+
+The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.
+
+The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. MĂĽller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
+
+
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+470-399 B.C.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
+
+He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.
+
+It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
+
+He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in "good society."
+
+The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
+
+But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
+
+His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.
+
+He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
+
+And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.
+
+To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.
+
+But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
+
+In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.
+
+So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.
+
+Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
+
+How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
+as what his _aim_ was.
+
+The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.
+
+Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
+
+Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.
+
+Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
+enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.
+
+Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.
+
+Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out."
+
+The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
+
+     "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
+beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
+
+But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
+
+Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
+any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+
+It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
+
+So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.
+
+Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.
+
+In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
+
+Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
+
+We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.
+
+So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
+
+His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.
+
+
+
+
+PHIDIAS
+
+500-430 B.C.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+
+I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.
+
+It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.
+
+The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
+
+Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
+
+Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.
+
+But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.
+
+"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.
+
+The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
+
+Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.
+
+Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
+
+But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.
+
+After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.
+
+It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.
+
+The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions." And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?
+
+The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital."
+
+The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.
+
+But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, "Life is short, but Art is long."
+
+But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.
+
+But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. "Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur."
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous _Hercules_ and the _Torso Belvedere_ are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the _Colossus of Rhodes_, the _Laocoön_,
+and the _Dying Gladiator_. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.
+
+But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The _Olympian Jove_ of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the _Venus_ of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's _Greek Slave_. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.
+
+I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.
+
+It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.
+
+Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+"fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.
+
+With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called "tone." He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The _Helen_ of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.
+
+But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that
+artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from
+character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.
+
+After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.
+
+We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.
+
+But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.
+
+It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Staël, and Macaulay, in our times.
+
+But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and FĂ©nelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.
+
+Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.
+
+Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+MĂĽller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+MĂĽller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfançon's Antiquité Expliquée en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS:
+
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+
+We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on "Ancient Religions." There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.
+
+Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.
+
+How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.
+
+We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.
+
+In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.
+
+Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. "At his summons," says Sir Walter Scott, "the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
+
+The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at
+Colonus." Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.
+
+Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.
+
+With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.
+
+The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Molière pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.
+
+Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Molière. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his "Clouds," the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.
+
+Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
+
+The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.
+
+The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.
+
+Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.
+
+Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Molière
+has imitated him in his "Avare," and Shakspeare in his "Comedy of
+Errors." Lessing pronounces the "Captivi" to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.
+
+Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.
+
+The "Thyestes" of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.
+
+In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his "History of Roman Literature," says:--
+
+"Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased."
+
+Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.
+
+In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "Georgics" of Virgil
+and the "Satires" of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.
+
+It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.
+
+In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.
+
+In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--
+
+     "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura LucretĂ®,
+      Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
+
+Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more
+highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.
+
+Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country."
+
+Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.
+
+Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
+
+In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.
+
+I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.
+
+The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as Apollo's
+lyre." Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.
+
+All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.
+
+The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great "Father of History" is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.
+
+To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.
+
+Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.
+
+If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.
+
+As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+_strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for _Ă©clat_.
+
+Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
+
+The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+MĂĽller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.
+
+The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give."
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.
+
+In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his father-in-law; his
+"Annales," which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the "Historiae," which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.
+
+Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries."
+We require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of
+Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters" of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "Arabian Nights"
+or Froissart's "Chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.
+
+A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his "Parallel Lives" of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.
+
+But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.
+
+Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.
+
+Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of
+the Caesars," like Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers," are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.
+
+It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of "Olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.
+
+But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.
+
+As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.
+
+Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience." Says Lord Brougham, "It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection."
+
+It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. "Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force."
+
+But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.
+
+Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.
+
+But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his "Regal Rome," thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--
+
+"He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion."
+
+Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.
+
+Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.
+
+In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--"De Re Rustica," written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his "Divine Antiquities," in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his "City of God." Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by _manner_.
+
+Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
+
+Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "Institutiones Oratoriae"
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the "De Oratore" of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.
+
+There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Molière. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+"Dialogues" of Lucian is the "City of God" by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
+
+Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.
+
+Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10477 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME
+I***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+MARY PORTER LORD,
+
+WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION
+
+AS A DEVOTED WIFE
+
+ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE
+
+OF HISTORICAL LABORS,
+
+This Work
+
+IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
+
+
+In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the "Beacon Lights
+of History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+"Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.
+
+The "Old Pagan Civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+"Ancient Achievements" and "Imperial Antiquity," the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+"Antiquity" and begins the "Middle Ages."
+
+NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.
+
+Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.
+
+The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.
+
+Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.
+
+I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.
+
+Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.
+
+And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.
+
+JOHN LORD.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+Ancient religions
+Christianity not progressive
+Jewish monotheism
+Religion of Egypt
+Its great antiquity
+Its essential features
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism
+Egyptian deities
+The worship of the sun
+The priestly caste of Egypt
+Power of the priests
+Future rewards and punishments
+Morals of the Egyptians
+Functions of the priests
+Egyptian ritual of worship
+Transmigration of souls
+Animal worship
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews
+Assyrian deities
+Phoenician deities
+Worship of the sun
+Oblations and sacrifices
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism
+Religion of the Persians
+Character of the early Iranians
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion
+Zoroaster
+Magism
+Zend-Avesta
+Dualism
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+Religions of India
+Antiquity of Brahmanism
+Sanskrit literature
+The Aryan races
+Original religion of the Aryans
+Aryan migrations
+The Vedas
+Ancient deities of India
+Laws of Menu
+Hindu pantheism
+Corruption of Brahmanism
+The Brahmanical caste
+Character of the Brahmans
+Rise of Buddhism
+Gautama
+Experiences of Gautama
+Travels of Buddha
+His religious system
+Spread of his doctrine
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism
+Nirvana
+Gloominess of Buddhism
+Buddhism as a reform of morals
+Sayings of Siddârtha
+His rules
+Failure of Buddhism in India
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans
+Greek myths
+Greek priests
+Greek divinities
+Greek polytheism
+Greek mythology
+Adoption of Oriental fables
+Greek deities the creation of poets
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods
+The Olympian deities
+The minor deities
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state
+Augustine view of heathen deities
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia
+Greek festivals
+No sacred books among the Greeks
+A religion without deities
+Roman divinities
+Peculiarities of Roman worship
+Ritualism and hypocrisy
+Character of the Roman
+Authorities
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+Early condition of China
+Youth of Confucius
+His public life
+His reforms
+His fame
+His wanderings
+His old age
+His writings
+His philosophy
+His definition of a superior man
+His ethics
+His views of government
+His veneration for antiquity
+His beautiful character
+His encouragement of learning
+His character as statesman
+His exaltation of filial piety
+His exaltation of friendship
+The supremacy of the State
+Necessity of good men in office
+Peaceful policy of Confucius
+Veneration for his writings
+His posthumous influence
+Lao-tse
+Authorities
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks
+Early progress of philosophy
+The Greek philosophy
+The Ionian Sophoi
+Thales and his principles
+Anaximenes
+Diogenes of Apollonia
+Heraclitus of Ephesus
+Anaxagoras
+Anaximander
+Pythagoras and his school
+Xenophanes
+Zeno of Elea
+Empedocles and the Eleatics
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher
+Progress of scepticism
+The Sophists
+Socrates
+His exposure of error
+Socrates as moralist
+The method of Socrates
+His services to philosophy
+His disciples
+Plato
+Ideas of Plato
+Archer Butler on Plato
+Aristotle
+His services
+The syllogism
+The Epicureans
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus
+The Stoics
+Zeno
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy
+Philosophy among the Romans
+Cicero
+Epictetus
+Authorities
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+Mission of Socrates
+Era of his birth; view of his times
+His personal appearance and peculiarities
+His lofty moral character
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents
+The Sophists
+Neglect of his family
+His friendship with distinguished people
+His philosophic method
+His questions and definitions
+His contempt of theories
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science
+The Ionian philosophers
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day
+Superiority of moral truth
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity
+The "daemon" of Socrates
+His idea of God and Immortality
+Socrates a witness and agent of God
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings
+Unjust charges of his enemies
+His unpopularity
+His trial and defence
+His audacity
+His condemnation
+The dignity of his last hours
+His easy death
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus
+Posthumous influence
+Authorities
+
+
+PHIDIAS.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+General popular interest in Art
+Principles on which it is based
+Phidias taken merely as a text
+Not much known of his personal history
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor
+Definitions of the word "Art"
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace
+The glory and dignity of art
+The connection of plastic with literary art
+Architecture, the first expression of art
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces
+General features of Grecian architecture
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+  Gothic architecture
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture
+Superiority of Greek sculpture
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+  distinguished men
+The great sculptors of antiquity
+Their ideal excellence
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt
+Its gradual development in Greece
+Famous Grecian painters
+Decline of art among the Romans
+Art as seen in literature
+Literature not permanent without art
+Artists as a class
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power
+Authorities
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS.
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry
+Homer
+Greek lyrical poetry
+Pindar
+Dramatic poetry
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes
+Roman poetry
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal
+Perfection of Greek prose writers
+History: Herodotus
+Thucydides, Xenophon
+Roman historians
+Julius Caesar
+Livy
+Tacitus
+Orators
+Pericles
+Demosthenes
+Aeschines
+Cicero
+Learned men: Varro
+Seneca
+Quintilian
+Lucian
+Authorities
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+Agapč, or Love Feast among the Early Christians _Frontispiece_
+_After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle_.
+
+Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris
+_After the painting by E.F. Bridgman_.
+
+Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal
+_After the painting by Henri Motte_.
+
+Apollo Belvedere
+_From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome._
+
+Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin
+_From a photograph_.
+
+The School of Plato
+_After the painting by O. Knille_.
+
+Socrates Instructing Alcibiades
+_After the painting by H.F. Schopin_.
+
+Socrates
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
+_After the painting by Hector Le Roux_.
+
+Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+  of Helen
+_After the painting by E. Pagliano_.
+
+Homer
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Demosthenes
+_From the statue in the Vatican, Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.
+
+The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?
+
+I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.
+
+The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.
+
+It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.
+
+But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.
+
+I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.
+
+The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.
+
+But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
+
+The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.
+
+The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.
+
+Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of
+beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.
+
+But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.
+
+But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.
+
+No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his "City of God," his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.
+
+We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the
+body." On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.
+
+Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.
+
+The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.
+
+The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
+
+One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.
+
+The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.
+
+"The worst form of this animal worship," says Rawlinson, "was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease."
+
+Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.
+
+The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.
+
+This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
+kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.
+
+These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.
+
+Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, "the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation." The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.
+
+In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. "In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the
+day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--"the
+prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.
+
+All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.
+
+There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, "the eldest son of Heaven," the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all
+beings," etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the
+great Hero," "the King of battles." He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+"teaches and instructs."
+
+There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.
+
+The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.
+
+An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.
+
+While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the "Father of all the gods," "the Ancient
+of days," reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.
+
+The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.
+
+With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.
+
+Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.
+
+It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.
+
+The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. "The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
+
+Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
+plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity."
+
+The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.
+
+There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.
+
+There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.
+
+The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gâthâs,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
+
+As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.
+
+Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
+spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.
+
+These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.
+
+Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
+says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gâthâs. "I worship,"
+said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.
+
+"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
+
+The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.
+
+Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
+
+The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
+
+Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.
+
+Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
+
+The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
+
+From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max Müller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.
+
+The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
+
+It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.
+
+Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
+
+Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
+
+It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Müller's
+"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--
+
+"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created."
+
+But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.
+
+[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]
+
+As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.
+
+It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
+Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.
+
+In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
+who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal."
+
+[Footnote 3: Rawlinson, p. 121.]
+[Footnote 4: Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.]
+[Footnote 5: Müller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.]
+
+In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.
+
+Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--"an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires."
+
+This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.
+
+The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.
+
+In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--
+
+"To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness."
+
+Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. "From his high birth," says Menu, "a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.
+
+But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.
+
+But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.
+
+     "He who through knowledge or religious acts
+     Henceforth attains to immortality,
+     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee."
+
+Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on "The Blood Covenant," thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.
+
+Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. "We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry." This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.
+
+Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.
+
+But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.
+
+In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
+
+Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the "Enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called Sâkyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the Sâkyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of Sâkya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.
+
+The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Siddârtha, or "the perfection of all
+things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.
+
+At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.
+
+On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, "I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed."
+
+This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.
+
+The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddârtha as yet is not the
+"enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.
+
+Siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.
+
+Siddârtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the Bôdhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.
+
+Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.
+
+The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.
+
+Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.
+
+It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
+
+Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
+
+Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.
+
+From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
+
+Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its
+emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+"body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism,"
+"a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic."
+
+Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!
+
+But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
+
+Hence the prince Siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
+
+"Let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others." He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. "As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings," said Gautama, "let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me."
+
+These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is "Quietism," without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.
+
+Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God." He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.
+
+Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
+
+"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites." The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.
+
+It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sákoontalá;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Vęda; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
+
+The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.
+
+These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.
+
+This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.
+
+Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source."
+
+Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.
+
+In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.
+
+The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.
+
+Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.
+
+Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.
+
+Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.
+
+Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.
+
+Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.
+
+Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.
+
+Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.
+
+Artemis (Roman Diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo." She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.
+
+Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.
+
+Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.
+
+Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.
+
+Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.
+
+Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.
+
+The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.
+
+He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.
+
+Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the "Arabian Nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.
+
+As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.
+
+On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, "The City of God," he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.
+
+But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.
+
+If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.
+
+The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.
+
+Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--
+
+     "All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,
+     Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;
+     But, animate with deity alone,
+     In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."
+
+If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other "divine" productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.
+
+It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.
+
+Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.
+
+The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The "heathen Chinee" fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.
+
+The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.
+
+This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man." In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.
+
+That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.
+
+It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.
+
+And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.
+
+It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.
+
+There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the _Penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a _Lar_, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.
+
+The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.
+
+The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.
+
+Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.
+
+If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.
+
+If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of
+the world"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max Müller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+Döllinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.
+
+
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+550-478 B.C.
+
+About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.
+
+"Confucius" is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.
+
+We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.
+
+But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.
+
+To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. "Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'"
+
+Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.
+
+At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.
+
+At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.
+
+On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.
+
+These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.
+
+But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.
+
+In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.
+
+At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.
+
+The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.
+
+In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said,
+"Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?"
+
+The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.
+
+Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, "I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker." If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.
+
+Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.
+
+And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+"superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied,
+"Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit." Again he said, "It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail." The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'" Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant." Thus he talks like Solomon.
+"Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'" Of a virtuous prince, he said: "In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just."
+
+It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: "It is to be heard of through the family and State." The master
+replied: "That is notoriety, not distinction." Again he said: "Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?" Again, "If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?" There is great force in this
+saying: "The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease." A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: "He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland." And, "The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "If a man," he said,
+"take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand." And again, "He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: "Specious words confound virtue." "Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "Virtue," the master
+said, "is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue." This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "There are three
+things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness."
+
+I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+"I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration." Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, "If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?" The master replied: "I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat." Here something like wit and irony break
+out: "A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'"
+
+When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: "Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted." When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: "Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents." "But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?" asked the duke. "Raise to office those whom you do know," The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "The art of
+government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?" This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal." This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.
+
+Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: "It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right." Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: "It is to love all men." Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: "Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself." This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+"Cast not your pearls before swine." There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: "What do you say about the treatment of injuries?" The master
+answered: "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness." Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount "When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again."
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: "The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: "Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented."
+
+Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.
+
+The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.
+
+Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner"
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.
+
+Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The "superior man," who next to
+the "sage" holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.
+
+In "The Great Learning" Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. "Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness."
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous."
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.
+
+The next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the
+person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.
+
+The height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "Happy,"
+says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers."
+
+While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.
+
+But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. "Friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick." One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends."
+
+Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. "No virtue," said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+"is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men." When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, "Enrich them;" and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, "Teach them." On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.
+
+Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.
+
+The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+"Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." Here
+we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.
+
+As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "I am,"
+said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.
+
+The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+"Book of Changes" (Yin-King), the "Book of Poetry" (She-King), the "Book
+of History" (Shoo-King), the "Book of Rites" (Le-King), the "Great
+Learning" (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+"Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of
+conduct, and the "Confucian Analects" (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!
+
+No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--"The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius." No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.
+
+This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.
+
+Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+
+Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.
+
+The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.
+
+Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!
+
+In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.
+
+We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.
+
+     "And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
+     Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark
+     Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea."
+
+He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "Philosophy," it has
+been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.
+
+Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.
+
+Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. "For," says he, "man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+_intelligence_. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: "It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute."
+
+Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. "If Anaximenes," says Maurice, not very clearly, "discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all." To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. "From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion," says Archer Butler, "Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas."
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.
+
+Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but
+rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.
+
+In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that _The Infinite_ is the origin of all
+things. He used the word _[Greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+"elements" could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+_deduction_. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.
+
+This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres."
+
+Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of _Kosmos_.
+
+Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.
+
+Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that _number_ is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. "It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him."
+
+We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.
+
+The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--
+
+     "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
+     As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
+     Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
+
+And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--
+
+     "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
+     And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;
+     But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
+     Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
+
+Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+_One_, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.
+
+Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_;
+the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
+
+Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.
+
+Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.
+
+Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "To
+philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity."
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.
+
+Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.
+
+This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.
+
+These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
+
+The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
+
+Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
+angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk."
+
+Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
+
+So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.
+
+These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.
+
+The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre."
+
+Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
+
+It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
+contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
+
+"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics."
+
+Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
+
+Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
+
+"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
+
+That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
+
+The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
+
+These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...
+
+Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.
+
+The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
+
+"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement."
+
+He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
+
+"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy."
+
+There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.
+
+With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.
+
+Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
+
+Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
+_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.
+
+Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
+
+Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.
+
+The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
+
+"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist."
+
+The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
+
+The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.
+
+Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
+and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.
+
+Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.
+
+With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
+fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
+
+The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.
+
+Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.
+
+Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
+
+The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.
+
+But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.
+
+Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
+
+There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
+
+Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
+
+Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.
+
+Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
+
+If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.
+
+The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.
+
+Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
+admiration.
+
+Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
+
+We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
+
+The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.
+
+The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. Müller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
+
+
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+470-399 B.C.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
+
+He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.
+
+It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
+
+He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in "good society."
+
+The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
+
+But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
+
+His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.
+
+He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
+
+And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.
+
+To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.
+
+But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
+
+In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.
+
+So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.
+
+Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
+
+How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
+as what his _aim_ was.
+
+The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.
+
+Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
+
+Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.
+
+Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
+enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.
+
+Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.
+
+Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out."
+
+The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
+
+     "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
+beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
+
+But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
+
+Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
+any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+
+It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
+
+So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.
+
+Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.
+
+In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
+
+Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
+
+We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.
+
+So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
+
+His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.
+
+
+
+
+PHIDIAS
+
+500-430 B.C.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+
+I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.
+
+It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.
+
+The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
+
+Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
+
+Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.
+
+But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.
+
+"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.
+
+The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
+
+Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.
+
+Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
+
+But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.
+
+After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.
+
+It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.
+
+The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions." And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?
+
+The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital."
+
+The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.
+
+But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, "Life is short, but Art is long."
+
+But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.
+
+But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. "Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur."
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous _Hercules_ and the _Torso Belvedere_ are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the _Colossus of Rhodes_, the _Laocoön_,
+and the _Dying Gladiator_. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.
+
+But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The _Olympian Jove_ of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the _Venus_ of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's _Greek Slave_. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.
+
+I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.
+
+It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.
+
+Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+"fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.
+
+With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called "tone." He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The _Helen_ of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.
+
+But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that
+artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from
+character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.
+
+After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.
+
+We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.
+
+But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.
+
+It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Staël, and Macaulay, in our times.
+
+But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and Fénelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.
+
+Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.
+
+Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Müller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+Müller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfançon's Antiquité Expliquée en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS:
+
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+
+We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on "Ancient Religions." There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.
+
+Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.
+
+How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.
+
+We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.
+
+In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.
+
+Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. "At his summons," says Sir Walter Scott, "the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
+
+The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at
+Colonus." Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.
+
+Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.
+
+With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.
+
+The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moličre pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.
+
+Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moličre. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his "Clouds," the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.
+
+Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
+
+The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.
+
+The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.
+
+Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.
+
+Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moličre
+has imitated him in his "Avare," and Shakspeare in his "Comedy of
+Errors." Lessing pronounces the "Captivi" to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.
+
+Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.
+
+The "Thyestes" of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.
+
+In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his "History of Roman Literature," says:--
+
+"Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased."
+
+Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.
+
+In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "Georgics" of Virgil
+and the "Satires" of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.
+
+It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.
+
+In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.
+
+In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--
+
+     "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucretî,
+      Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
+
+Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more
+highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.
+
+Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country."
+
+Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.
+
+Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
+
+In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.
+
+I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.
+
+The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as Apollo's
+lyre." Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.
+
+All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.
+
+The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great "Father of History" is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.
+
+To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.
+
+Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.
+
+If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.
+
+As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+_strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for _éclat_.
+
+Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
+
+The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+Müller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.
+
+The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give."
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.
+
+In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his father-in-law; his
+"Annales," which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the "Historiae," which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.
+
+Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries."
+We require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of
+Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters" of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "Arabian Nights"
+or Froissart's "Chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.
+
+A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his "Parallel Lives" of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.
+
+But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.
+
+Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.
+
+Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of
+the Caesars," like Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers," are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.
+
+It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of "Olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.
+
+But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.
+
+As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.
+
+Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience." Says Lord Brougham, "It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection."
+
+It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. "Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force."
+
+But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.
+
+Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.
+
+But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his "Regal Rome," thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--
+
+"He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion."
+
+Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.
+
+Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.
+
+In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--"De Re Rustica," written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his "Divine Antiquities," in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his "City of God." Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by _manner_.
+
+Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
+
+Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "Institutiones Oratoriae"
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the "De Oratore" of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.
+
+There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moličre. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+"Dialogues" of Lucian is the "City of God" by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
+
+Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.
+
+Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John Lord</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I***
+
+
+</pre>
+<center><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full">
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><i>LORD'S LECTURES</i></center>
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.</h2>
+
+
+<h2>BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,</h2>
+
+<center>AUTHOR OF &quot;THE OLD ROMAN WORLD,&quot; &quot;MODERN EUROPE,&quot;
+ETC., ETC.</center>
+<br><br>
+
+<h2>VOLUME I.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>To the Memory of</h2>
+
+<center>MARY PORTER LORD,</center>
+
+<center>WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION</center>
+
+<center>AS A DEVOTED WIFE</center>
+
+<center>ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE</center>
+
+<center>OF HISTORICAL LABORS,</center>
+
+<center>This Work</center>
+
+<center>IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED</center>
+
+<center>BY THE AUTHOR.</center>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>PUBLISHERS' NOTE.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the &quot;Beacon Lights
+of History,&quot; it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+&quot;Antiquity,&quot; and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of &quot;Old Pagan Civilizations&quot; (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the &quot;Jewish Heroes and Prophets.&quot; These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Old Pagan Civilizations,&quot; of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on &quot;Jewish Heroes and Prophets,&quot; ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+&quot;Ancient Achievements&quot; and &quot;Imperial Antiquity,&quot; the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+&quot;Antiquity&quot; and begins the &quot;Middle Ages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHOR'S PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.</p>
+
+<p>Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.</p>
+
+<p>The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.</p>
+
+<p>I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.</p>
+
+<p>Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.</p>
+
+<p>And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for <i>services</i> that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN LORD.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>VOL. I.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<h2>THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_RELIGIONS">ANCIENT RELIGIONS</a></i>:</p>
+
+<p>EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.</p>
+
+Ancient religions<br>
+Christianity not progressive<br>
+Jewish monotheism<br>
+Religion of Egypt<br>
+Its great antiquity<br>
+Its essential features<br>
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism<br>
+Egyptian deities<br>
+The worship of the sun<br>
+The priestly caste of Egypt<br>
+Power of the priests<br>
+Future rewards and punishments<br>
+Morals of the Egyptians<br>
+Functions of the priests<br>
+Egyptian ritual of worship<br>
+Transmigration of souls<br>
+Animal worship<br>
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews<br>
+Assyrian deities<br>
+Phoenician deities<br>
+Worship of the sun<br>
+Oblations and sacrifices<br>
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism<br>
+Religion of the Persians<br>
+Character of the early Iranians<br>
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion<br>
+Zoroaster<br>
+Magism<br>
+Zend-Avesta<br>
+Dualism<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_RELIGIONS">RELIGIONS OF INDIA</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.</p>
+
+Religions of India<br>
+Antiquity of Brahmanism<br>
+Sanskrit literature<br>
+The Aryan races<br>
+Original religion of the Aryans<br>
+Aryan migrations<br>
+The Vedas<br>
+Ancient deities of India<br>
+Laws of Menu<br>
+Hindu pantheism<br>
+Corruption of Brahmanism<br>
+The Brahmanical caste<br>
+Character of the Brahmans<br>
+Rise of Buddhism<br>
+Gautama<br>
+Experiences of Gautama<br>
+Travels of Buddha<br>
+His religious system<br>
+Spread of his doctrine<br>
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism<br>
+Nirvana<br>
+Gloominess of Buddhism<br>
+Buddhism as a reform of morals<br>
+Sayings of Sidd&acirc;rtha<br>
+His rules<br>
+Failure of Buddhism in India<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#RELIGION_OF_THE_GREEKS_AND_ROMANS.">RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.</p>
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans<br>
+Greek myths<br>
+Greek priests<br>
+Greek divinities<br>
+Greek polytheism<br>
+Greek mythology<br>
+Adoption of Oriental fables<br>
+Greek deities the creation of poets<br>
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods<br>
+The Olympian deities<br>
+The minor deities<br>
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state<br>
+Augustine view of heathen deities<br>
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine<br>
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia<br>
+Greek festivals<br>
+No sacred books among the Greeks<br>
+A religion without deities<br>
+Roman divinities<br>
+Peculiarities of Roman worship<br>
+Ritualism and hypocrisy<br>
+Character of the Roman<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#CONFUCIUS.">CONFUCIUS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>SAGE AND MORALIST.</p>
+
+Early condition of China<br>
+Youth of Confucius<br>
+His public life<br>
+His reforms<br>
+His fame<br>
+His wanderings<br>
+His old age<br>
+His writings<br>
+His philosophy<br>
+His definition of a superior man<br>
+His ethics<br>
+His views of government<br>
+His veneration for antiquity<br>
+His beautiful character<br>
+His encouragement of learning<br>
+His character as statesman<br>
+His exaltation of filial piety<br>
+His exaltation of friendship<br>
+The supremacy of the State<br>
+Necessity of good men in office<br>
+Peaceful policy of Confucius<br>
+Veneration for his writings<br>
+His posthumous influence<br>
+Lao-tse<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_PHILOSOPHY.">ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.</p>
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks<br>
+Early progress of philosophy<br>
+The Greek philosophy<br>
+The Ionian Sophoi<br>
+Thales and his principles<br>
+Anaximenes<br>
+Diogenes of Apollonia<br>
+Heraclitus of Ephesus<br>
+Anaxagoras<br>
+Anaximander<br>
+Pythagoras and his school<br>
+Xenophanes<br>
+Zeno of Elea<br>
+Empedocles and the Eleatics<br>
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher<br>
+Progress of scepticism<br>
+The Sophists<br>
+Socrates<br>
+His exposure of error<br>
+Socrates as moralist<br>
+The method of Socrates<br>
+His services to philosophy<br>
+His disciples<br>
+Plato<br>
+Ideas of Plato<br>
+Archer Butler on Plato<br>
+Aristotle<br>
+His services<br>
+The syllogism<br>
+The Epicureans<br>
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus<br>
+The Stoics<br>
+Zeno<br>
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy<br>
+Philosophy among the Romans<br>
+Cicero<br>
+Epictetus<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#SOCRATES.">SOCRATES</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+
+Mission of Socrates<br>
+Era of his birth; view of his times<br>
+His personal appearance and peculiarities<br>
+His lofty moral character<br>
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents<br>
+The Sophists<br>
+Neglect of his family<br>
+His friendship with distinguished people<br>
+His philosophic method<br>
+His questions and definitions<br>
+His contempt of theories<br>
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science<br>
+The Ionian philosophers<br>
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness<br>
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day<br>
+Superiority of moral truth<br>
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity<br>
+The &quot;daemon&quot; of Socrates<br>
+His idea of God and Immortality<br>
+Socrates a witness and agent of God<br>
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius<br>
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings<br>
+Unjust charges of his enemies<br>
+His unpopularity<br>
+His trial and defence<br>
+His audacity<br>
+His condemnation<br>
+The dignity of his last hours<br>
+His easy death<br>
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus<br>
+Posthumous influence<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#PHIDIAS">PHIDIAS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK ART.</p>
+
+General popular interest in Art<br>
+Principles on which it is based<br>
+Phidias taken merely as a text<br>
+Not much known of his personal history<br>
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove<br>
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor<br>
+Definitions of the word &quot;Art&quot;<br>
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace<br>
+The glory and dignity of art<br>
+The connection of plastic with literary art<br>
+Architecture, the first expression of art<br>
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture<br>
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces<br>
+General features of Grecian architecture<br>
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders<br>
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...<br>
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+Gothic architecture<br>
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture<br>
+Superiority of Greek sculpture<br>
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+distinguished men<br>
+The great sculptors of antiquity<br>
+Their ideal excellence<br>
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt<br>
+Its gradual development in Greece<br>
+Famous Grecian painters<br>
+Decline of art among the Romans<br>
+Art as seen in literature<br>
+Literature not permanent without art<br>
+Artists as a class<br>
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#LITERARY_GENIUS:">LITERARY GENIUS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.</p>
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry<br>
+Homer<br>
+Greek lyrical poetry<br>
+Pindar<br>
+Dramatic poetry<br>
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides<br>
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes<br>
+Roman poetry<br>
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence<br>
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil<br>
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus<br>
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius<br>
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus<br>
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal<br>
+Perfection of Greek prose writers<br>
+History: Herodotus<br>
+Thucydides, Xenophon<br>
+Roman historians<br>
+Julius Caesar<br>
+Livy<br>
+Tacitus<br>
+Orators<br>
+Pericles<br>
+Demosthenes<br>
+Aeschines<br>
+Cicero<br>
+Learned men: Varro<br>
+Seneca<br>
+Quintilian<br>
+Lucian<br>
+Authorities<br>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<p>VOLUME I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Agap&egrave;,_or_Love_Feast_among_the_Early_Christians"></a><a href="images/Illus0369.jpg">Agap&egrave;, or Love Feast among the Early Christians</a> <i>Frontispiece</i>
+<i>After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Procession_of_the_Sacred_Bull_Apis-Osiris"></a><a href="images/Illus0368.jpg">Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris</a>
+<i>After the painting by E.F. Bridgman</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Driving_Sacrificial_Victims_into_the_Fiery_Mouth_of_Baal"></a><a href="images/Illus0370.jpg">Driving_Sacrificial_Victims_into_the_Fiery_Mouth_of_Baal</a>
+<i>After the painting by Henri Motte</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Apollo_Belvedere"></a><a href="images/Illus0367.jpg">Apollo Belvedere</a>
+<i>From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="Confucian_Temple,_Forbidden_City,_Pekin"></a><a href="images/Illus0366.jpg">Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin</a>
+<i>From a photograph</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="The_School_of_Plato"></a><a href="images/Illus0365.jpg">The School of Plato</a>
+<i>After the painting by O. Knille</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Socrates_Instructing_Alcibiades"></a><a href="images/Illus0364.jpg">Socrates Instructing Alcibiades</a>
+<i>After the painting by H.F. Schopin</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name=">Socrates"></a><a href="images/Illus0363.jpg">Socrates</a>
+<i>From the bust in the National Museum, Naples</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Pericles_and_Aspasia_in_the_Studio_of_Phidias"></a><a href="images/Illus0362.jpg">Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias</a>
+<i>After the painting by Hector Le Roux</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Zeuxis_Choosing_Models_from_among_the_Beauties_of_Kroton_for_his_Picture
+of_Helen"></a><a href="images/Illus0361.jpg">Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+of Helen</a>
+<i>After the painting by E. Pagliano</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Homer"></a><a href="images/Illus0360.jpg">Homer</a>
+<i>From the bust in the National Museum, Naples</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Demosthenes"></a><a href="images/Illus0359.jpg">Demosthenes</a>
+<i>From the statue in the Vatican, Rome</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="ANCIENT_RELIGIONS"></a>ANCIENT RELIGIONS:</h2>
+<br>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.</p>
+
+<p>The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?</p>
+
+<p>I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.</p>
+
+<p>I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.</p>
+
+<p>But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.</p>
+
+<p>Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, &quot;the father of
+beginnings;&quot; his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.</p>
+
+<p>But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.</p>
+
+<p>No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his &quot;City of God,&quot; his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments &quot;according to the deeds done in the
+body.&quot; On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.</p>
+
+<p>The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+&quot;Religious observances,&quot; says Freeman Clarke, &quot;were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation.&quot;
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.</p>
+
+<p>The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The worst form of this animal worship,&quot; says Rawlinson, &quot;was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.</p>
+
+<p>This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was &quot;Asshur, my Lord.&quot; He was also called &quot;King of
+kings,&quot; reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+&quot;Father of the gods.&quot; His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.</p>
+
+<p>These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning &quot;Lord,&quot; the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.</p>
+
+<p>Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, &quot;the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation.&quot; The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.</p>
+
+<p>In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. &quot;In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day.&quot; Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, &quot;the lord of fire,&quot; &quot;the ruler of the
+day,&quot; was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--&quot;the
+prince of the power of the air,&quot; destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, &quot;the lord of fecundity,&quot; he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.</p>
+
+<p>All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.</p>
+
+<p>There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, &quot;the eldest son of Heaven,&quot; the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as &quot;King of heaven and earth,&quot; the &quot;Lord of all
+beings,&quot; etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying &quot;the
+great Hero,&quot; &quot;the King of battles.&quot; He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+&quot;teaches and instructs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.</p>
+
+<p>The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.</p>
+
+<p>An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.</p>
+
+<p>While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the &quot;Father of all the gods,&quot; &quot;the Ancient
+of days,&quot; reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.</p>
+
+<p>The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.</p>
+
+<p>Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. &quot;The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other.&quot; It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.</p>
+
+<p>Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. &quot;The whole
+plateau of Iran,&quot; says Johnson, &quot;was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! &quot;These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil.&quot; Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.</p>
+
+<p>There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. <i>Zend</i> is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the G&acirc;th&acirc;s,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.</p>
+
+<p>As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.</p>
+
+<p>Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the &quot;Much-knowing
+spirit,&quot; or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--&quot;the creator of life,&quot; who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.</p>
+
+<p>These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. &quot;From the sun,&quot;
+says the Avesta, &quot;are all things sought that can be desired.&quot; To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the G&acirc;th&acirc;s. &quot;I worship,&quot;
+said he, &quot;the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose.&quot; Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+&quot;In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule.&quot; From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: &quot;I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd.&quot; It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph.&quot; <a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.
+
+<p>The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the G&acirc;th&acirc;s. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.</p>
+
+<p>The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="RELIGIONS_OF_INDIA."></a>RELIGIONS OF INDIA.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.</p>
+
+<p>That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the &quot;lust of the eye and the pride of life,&quot; rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.</p>
+
+<p>Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.</p>
+
+<p>The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.</p>
+
+<p>From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max M&uuml;ller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.</p>
+
+<p>The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.</p>
+
+<p>It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin <i>ignis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the <i>animus mundi</i>. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from M&uuml;ller's
+&quot;Ancient Sanskrit Literature&quot; one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.
+
+<p>As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. &quot;There is no recognition,&quot; says
+Monier Williams, &quot;of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature.&quot; There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.</p>
+
+<p>In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. &quot;The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed,&quot; <a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>,
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. &quot;He
+who gives alms,&quot; says one poet, &quot;goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>.... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> Rawlinson, p. 121.<br>
+<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.<br>
+<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> M&uuml;ller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.<br>
+
+<p>In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.</p>
+
+<p>Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--&quot;an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.</p>
+
+<p>In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. &quot;From his high birth,&quot; says Menu, &quot;a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities.&quot; Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.</p>
+
+<p>But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.</p>
+
+<p>But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;He who through knowledge or religious acts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Henceforth attains to immortality,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall first present his body, Death, to thee.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on &quot;The Blood Covenant,&quot; thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of <i>life</i>) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. &quot;We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry.&quot; This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is <i>being</i>, but not <i>existence</i>. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.</p>
+
+<p>In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. &quot;The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves.&quot; The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the &quot;Enlightened,&quot;--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called S&acirc;kyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the S&acirc;kyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of S&acirc;kya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.</p>
+
+<p>The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Sidd&acirc;rtha, or &quot;the perfection of all
+things.&quot; His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.</p>
+
+<p>At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a <i>deva</i>, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a <i>deva</i> contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a <i>deva</i>, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, &quot;I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.</p>
+
+<p>The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Sidd&acirc;rtha as yet is not the
+&quot;enlightened,&quot;--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.</p>
+
+<p>Sidd&acirc;rtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.</p>
+
+<p>Sidd&acirc;rtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the B&ocirc;dhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even <i>temperance</i>,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.</p>
+
+<p>It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--<i>practical</i> and <i>speculative</i>. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.</p>
+
+<p>From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the &quot;total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man.&quot; This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the &quot;spirit&quot; the immortal part of man, the &quot;soul&quot; being its
+emotional embodiment, its &quot;spiritual body,&quot; whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+&quot;body,&quot;--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's &quot;Buddhist Catechism,&quot;
+&quot;a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!</p>
+
+<p>But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the prince Sidd&acirc;rtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us then,&quot; said he, &quot;live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others.&quot; He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. &quot;As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings,&quot; said Gautama, &quot;let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is &quot;Quietism,&quot; without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but &quot;he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God.&quot; He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Buddhism,&quot; says the author of its accepted catechism, &quot;teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites.&quot; The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.</p>
+
+<p>It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+M&uuml;ller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's S&aacute;koontal&aacute;;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la V&ecirc;da; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="RELIGION_OF_THE_GREEKS_AND_ROMANS."></a>RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.</p>
+
+<p>Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim &quot;to raise mortals to the skies,&quot; but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.</p>
+
+<p>These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. &quot;Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods.&quot; Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.</p>
+
+<p>This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, &quot;the Father of gods and men,&quot; to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.</p>
+
+<p>Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. &quot;The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.</p>
+
+<p>Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.</p>
+
+<p>Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.</p>
+
+<p>Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.</p>
+
+<p>Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.</p>
+
+<p>Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.</p>
+
+<p>Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>Artemis (Roman Diana) was &quot;a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo.&quot; She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.</p>
+
+<p>Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.</p>
+
+<p>Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.</p>
+
+<p>Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.</p>
+
+<p>Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.</p>
+
+<p>Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.</p>
+
+<p>The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.</p>
+
+<p>He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the &quot;Arabian Nights,&quot; it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.</p>
+
+<p>As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.</p>
+
+<p>On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, &quot;The City of God,&quot; he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.</p>
+
+<p>But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.</p>
+
+<p>If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.</p>
+
+<p>The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But, animate with deity alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other &quot;divine&quot; productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.</p>
+
+<p>The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The &quot;heathen Chinee&quot; fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.</p>
+
+<p>The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, &quot;Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man.&quot; In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.</p>
+
+<p>That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate &quot;division of labor&quot; among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.</p>
+
+<p>There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the <i>Penates</i>, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a <i>Lar</i>, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.</p>
+
+<p>The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.</p>
+
+<p>The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: &quot;Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful.&quot; An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.</p>
+
+<p>If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the &quot;light of
+the world&quot;!</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max M&uuml;ller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+D&ouml;llinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="CONFUCIUS."></a>CONFUCIUS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>SAGE AND MORALIST.</p>
+
+<p>550-478 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was &quot;a transmitter, and not a maker.&quot; But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confucius&quot; is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.</p>
+
+<p>But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.</p>
+
+<p>To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. &quot;Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.</p>
+
+<p>These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, &quot;I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,&quot;--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, &quot;You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on.&quot; How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.</p>
+
+<p>The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.</p>
+
+<p>In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, &quot;Heaven is destroying me!&quot; His disciples on this said,
+&quot;Sir, your grief is excessive.&quot; &quot;It is excessive,&quot; he replied. &quot;If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, &quot;I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker.&quot; If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.</p>
+
+<p>And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+&quot;superior man is catholic and no partisan.&quot; Duke Gae asked, &quot;What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?&quot; The sage replied,
+&quot;Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit.&quot; Again he said, &quot;It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail.&quot; The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: &quot;A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'&quot; Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: &quot;In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant.&quot; Thus he talks like Solomon.
+&quot;Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'&quot; Of a virtuous prince, he said: &quot;In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: &quot;It is to be heard of through the family and State.&quot; The master
+replied: &quot;That is notoriety, not distinction.&quot; Again he said: &quot;Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?&quot; Again, &quot;If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?&quot; There is great force in this
+saying: &quot;The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease.&quot; A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: &quot;He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland.&quot; And, &quot;The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.&quot; &quot;If a man,&quot; he said,
+&quot;take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand.&quot; And again, &quot;He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment.&quot; These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: &quot;Specious words confound virtue.&quot; &quot;Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans.&quot; &quot;Virtue,&quot; the master
+said, &quot;is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue.&quot; This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. &quot;There are three
+things,&quot; he continued, &quot;which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+&quot;I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself.&quot; His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: &quot;The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration.&quot; Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, &quot;If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?&quot; The master replied: &quot;I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat.&quot; Here something like wit and irony break
+out: &quot;A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: &quot;Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted.&quot; When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: &quot;Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents.&quot; &quot;But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?&quot; asked the duke. &quot;Raise to office those whom you do know,&quot; The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: &quot;A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire.&quot; &quot;The art of
+government,&quot; he said, &quot;is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?&quot; This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: &quot;If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal.&quot; This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: &quot;It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right.&quot; Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: &quot;It is to love all men.&quot; Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: &quot;Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself.&quot; This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+&quot;Cast not your pearls before swine.&quot; There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: &quot;What do you say about the treatment of injuries?&quot; The master
+answered: &quot;Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness.&quot; Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount &quot;When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again.&quot;
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: &quot;The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit.&quot; The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: &quot;Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.</p>
+
+<p>The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the &quot;headstone of the corner&quot;
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The &quot;superior man,&quot; who next to
+the &quot;sage&quot; holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.</p>
+
+<p>In &quot;The Great Learning&quot; Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or <i>knowledge</i>, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. &quot;Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness.&quot;
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for &quot;learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous.&quot;
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.</p>
+
+<p>The next step towards perfection is the <i>cultivation of the
+person</i>,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.</p>
+
+<p>The height of virtue is <i>filial piety</i>; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. &quot;Happy,&quot;
+says he, &quot;is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.</p>
+
+<p>But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. &quot;Friends,&quot; said he, &quot;are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick.&quot; One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. &quot;He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. &quot;No virtue,&quot; said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+&quot;is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men.&quot; When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, &quot;Enrich them;&quot; and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, &quot;Teach them.&quot; On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+&quot;Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you.&quot; Here
+we have the negative side of the positive &quot;golden rule.&quot; Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.</p>
+
+<p>As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. &quot;I am,&quot;
+said he, &quot;not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear.&quot; He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+&quot;Book of Changes&quot; (Yin-King), the &quot;Book of Poetry&quot; (She-King), the &quot;Book
+of History&quot; (Shoo-King), the &quot;Book of Rites&quot; (Le-King), the &quot;Great
+Learning&quot; (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+&quot;Doctrine of the Mean&quot; (Chung-yung), teaching the &quot;golden mean&quot; of
+conduct, and the &quot;Confucian Analects&quot; (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--&quot;The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius.&quot; No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be &quot;ancient&quot; is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.</p>
+
+<p>This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.</p>
+
+<p>Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="ANCIENT_PHILOSOPHY."></a>ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.</p>
+
+<p>Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!</p>
+
+<p>In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. &quot;Know thyself,&quot; is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the <i>beginning of things.</i> &quot;Philosophy,&quot; it has
+been well said, &quot;maybe a history of <i>errors</i>^ but not of <i>follies</i>&quot;. It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the <i>prima materia</i>, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as <i>intelligence</i>, or as a <i>creative</i> power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.</p>
+
+<p>Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that <i>air</i>, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.</p>
+
+<p>Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. &quot;For,&quot; says he, &quot;man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul.&quot; And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as <i>soul</i> it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+<i>intelligence</i>. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: &quot;It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as <i>fire</i>, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. &quot;If Anaximenes,&quot; says Maurice, not very clearly, &quot;discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, <i>himself</i>, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all.&quot; To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. &quot;From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion,&quot; says Archer Butler, &quot;Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas.&quot;
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.</p>
+
+<p>Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the <i>primum mobile</i>,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not <i>matter</i> in its different elements, but
+rather <i>mind</i>, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. &quot;Nothing,&quot; says he, &quot;can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,&quot;--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that <i>The Infinite</i> is the origin of all
+things. He used the word <i>[Greek: archae] (beginning)</i> to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+&quot;elements&quot; could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an <i>induction</i> from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+<i>deduction</i>. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.</p>
+
+<p>This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as &quot;clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of <i>Kosmos</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that <i>number</i> is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. &quot;It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle <i>ex nihilo nihil fit</i> he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+<i>One</i>, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, &quot;for,&quot; said he, &quot;error is spread over all things.&quot; It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? &quot;Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?&quot; What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.</p>
+
+<p>Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of <i>being</i>. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is <i>thought</i>;
+the <i>All</i> is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented <i>Dialectics</i>, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the <i>One</i>, Zeno proved the non-existence of the <i>Many</i>.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.</p>
+
+<p>Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus &quot;God is love&quot; is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might &quot;behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.&quot; Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. &quot;To
+philosophy,&quot; said he, &quot;I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity.&quot;
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. <i>Cui bono?</i> this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.</p>
+
+<p>These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+<i>paid</i> to make the &quot;worse appear the better reason;&quot; yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.</p>
+
+<p>The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called &quot;Sophists,&quot; but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or <i>lovers</i> of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was <i>errors</i> rather than persons, <i>opinions</i> rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a &quot;scolding wife&quot; after the <i>res
+angusta domi</i> had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. &quot;I have heard Pericles,&quot; said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, &quot;and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the <i>idea</i> of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that &quot;the proper study of mankind is man,&quot;--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, &quot;Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth.&quot; He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.</p>
+
+<p>These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. &quot;Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy.&quot; Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated <i>real</i> knowledge from the <i>conceit</i> of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective <i>logical</i>
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective <i>physical</i> researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, &quot;are twofold,--negative and positive. <i>Negative</i>, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. <i>Positive</i>, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of &quot;the good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but <i>his
+contribution</i> to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+&quot;Dialogues&quot; are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.</p>
+
+<p>Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called <i>Ideas</i>;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of <i>ideas</i> as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+<i>numbers</i>. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is <i>love</i>. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is <i>truth</i>; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. &quot;The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy,&quot; says Ritter, &quot;is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected.&quot; To quote from Ritter again:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.</p>
+
+<p>The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--</p>
+
+<p>These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...</p>
+
+<p>Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on &quot;The History of Animals&quot; was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.</p>
+
+<p>With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.</p>
+
+<p>Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a <i>subjective</i> existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone <i>exist</i>; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by <i>sensation</i>. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made <i>reason</i> the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made <i>experience</i> that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. &quot;He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation.&quot; Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the <i>general</i> were better known than the
+<i>particular</i>; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.</p>
+
+<p>Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.</p>
+
+<p>The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+<i>Stoa</i>, &quot;the Porch,&quot; which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. &quot;The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself.&quot; Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of <i>good</i>
+and <i>evil</i>, which is the province of the reason; <i>temperance</i>, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; <i>fortitude</i>, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and <i>justice</i>,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+<i>perfection</i> necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+&quot;success in life;&quot; but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.</p>
+
+<p>Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.</p>
+
+<p>With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until &quot;the
+fulness of time&quot; should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.</p>
+
+<p>The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.</p>
+
+<p>Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.</p>
+
+<p>Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.</p>
+
+<p>The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.</p>
+
+<p>But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.</p>
+
+<p>There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise &quot;De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum,&quot; in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay &quot;De Natura Deorum,&quot; in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.</p>
+
+<p>Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.</p>
+
+<p>If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who <i>lived</i> the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose &quot;Thoughts&quot; are still held in
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?</p>
+
+<p>We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.</p>
+
+<p>The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.</p>
+
+<p>The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. M&uuml;ller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="SOCRATES."></a>SOCRATES.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>470-399 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.</p>
+
+<p>He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+&quot;appearance,&quot; says Grote, &quot;was a moral phenomenon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic <i>gens</i>.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in &quot;good society.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call &quot;a character.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.</p>
+
+<p>His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.</p>
+
+<p>He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. &quot;To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore.&quot; Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the &quot;Menexenus&quot;
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the &quot;Symposium&quot; he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.</p>
+
+<p>To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.</p>
+
+<p>But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.</p>
+
+<p>So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.</p>
+
+<p>Thus arose the celebrated &quot;definitions,&quot;--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what <i>is</i>, and what <i>is not</i>. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.</p>
+
+<p>How far the &quot;definitions&quot; of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his <i>method</i> was
+as what his <i>aim</i> was.</p>
+
+<p>The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, &quot;Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,&quot;--the essence and spirit of all paganism.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and &quot;for physics substituted morals.&quot; He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. &quot;Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe.&quot; It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. &quot;Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends.&quot; He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.</p>
+
+<p>Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The &quot;Thoughts&quot; of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. &quot;This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice.&quot; From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice &quot;which forbade him to
+enter on public life,&quot; or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+&quot;divine grace&quot; of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. &quot;Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, &quot;The evil that I would not, that I do.&quot; Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but <i>he</i> had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an &quot;inspiration,&quot; and others would call &quot;grace.&quot; Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a &quot;fear&quot; of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as &quot;the
+beginning of wisdom,&quot;--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them &quot;gods,&quot; or divinities, and not <i>the</i> &quot;God Almighty&quot; whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.</p>
+
+<p>Think what a man he was: truly was he a &quot;moral phenomenon.&quot; You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+<i>his</i> disciples no such &quot;miserable interrogatory&quot; as &quot;Who shall show us
+any good?&quot; but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--&quot;What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.</p>
+
+<p>So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the &quot;Clouds,&quot; held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism <i>was</i> subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.</p>
+
+<p>His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the &quot;Memorabilia&quot; of Xenophon and the &quot;Dialogues&quot; of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. &quot;No man has ever been found,&quot; says Grote, &quot;strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity.&quot; His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="PHIDIAS"></a>PHIDIAS</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>500-430 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK ART.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-&aacute;-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.</p>
+
+<p>It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.</p>
+
+<p>Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Art&quot; is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.</p>
+
+<p>The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.</p>
+
+<p>Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. &quot;Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy,&quot; says Cleghorn, &quot;have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize,&quot; Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. &quot;Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age.&quot; These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.</p>
+
+<p>But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.</p>
+
+<p>After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.</p>
+
+<p>The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. &quot;So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions.&quot; And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the <i>column</i>, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the <i>arch</i> is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?</p>
+
+<p>The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that &quot;the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.</p>
+
+<p>But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, &quot;Life is short, but Art is long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. &quot;Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur.&quot;
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous <i>Hercules</i> and the <i>Torso Belvedere</i> are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the <i>Colossus of Rhodes</i>, the <i>Laoco&ouml;n</i>,
+and the <i>Dying Gladiator</i>. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.</p>
+
+<p>But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The <i>Olympian Jove</i> of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the <i>Moses</i> of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the <i>Venus</i> of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's <i>Greek Slave</i>. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.</p>
+
+<p>I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.</p>
+
+<p>It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.</p>
+
+<p>Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+&quot;fore-shortening,&quot; and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.</p>
+
+<p>With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented <i>chiaroscuro</i> (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called &quot;tone.&quot; He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The <i>Helen</i> of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.</p>
+
+<p>But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--&quot;that
+artless balance of motion and repose,&quot; says Fuseli, &quot;springing from
+character and founded on propriety.&quot; Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.</p>
+
+<p>After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.</p>
+
+<p>We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call &quot;encaustic.&quot; Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.</p>
+
+<p>But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of <i>style</i> in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Sta&euml;l, and Macaulay, in our times.</p>
+
+<p>But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and F&eacute;nelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.</p>
+
+<p>Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>M&uuml;ller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+M&uuml;ller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfan&ccedil;on's Antiquit&eacute; Expliqu&eacute;e en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="LITERARY_GENIUS:"></a>LITERARY GENIUS:</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on &quot;Ancient Religions.&quot; There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.</p>
+
+<p>How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.</p>
+
+<p>We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.</p>
+
+<p>Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. &quot;At his summons,&quot; says Sir Walter Scott, &quot;the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves.&quot; His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.</p>
+
+<p>The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the &quot;Oedipus at
+Colonus.&quot; Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+&quot;Antigone&quot; was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moli&egrave;re pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.</p>
+
+<p>Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moli&egrave;re. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his &quot;Clouds,&quot; the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.</p>
+
+<p>Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.</p>
+
+<p>Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moli&egrave;re
+has imitated him in his &quot;Avare,&quot; and Shakspeare in his &quot;Comedy of
+Errors.&quot; Lessing pronounces the &quot;Captivi&quot; to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Thyestes&quot; of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his &quot;History of Roman Literature,&quot; says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.</p>
+
+<p>In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the &quot;Georgics&quot; of Virgil
+and the &quot;Satires&quot; of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--<i>Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax</i>. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.</p>
+
+<p>It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.</p>
+
+<p>In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.</p>
+
+<p>In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem &quot;De Rerum Natura&quot; is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's &quot;Essay on Man&quot; in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucret&icirc;,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Exitio terras quum dabit una dies.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose &quot;Tristia,&quot; a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his &quot;Metamorphoses,&quot; mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His &quot;Tristia&quot; were more
+highly praised than his &quot;Amores&quot; or his &quot;Metamorphoses,&quot; a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.</p>
+
+<p>Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that &quot;the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.</p>
+
+<p>Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.</p>
+
+<p>In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.</p>
+
+<p>I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.</p>
+
+<p>The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as &quot;musical as Apollo's
+lyre.&quot; Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great &quot;Father of History&quot; is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.</p>
+
+<p>To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.</p>
+
+<p>Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+&quot;Anabasis,&quot; in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his &quot;Cyropaedia,&quot; in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his &quot;Memorabilia&quot; of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.</p>
+
+<p>If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.</p>
+
+<p>As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+<i>strong</i> men, and <i>because</i> they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for <i>&eacute;clat</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+&quot;Commentaries&quot; resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.</p>
+
+<p>The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+M&uuml;ller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.</p>
+
+<p>The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. &quot;His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give.&quot;
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.</p>
+
+<p>In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the &quot;Life of Agricola,&quot; his father-in-law; his
+&quot;Annales,&quot; which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the &quot;Historiae,&quot; which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's &quot;Commentaries.&quot;
+We require <i>life</i> in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the &quot;Life of
+Charles XII.&quot; and the &quot;Thirty Years' War&quot; are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the <i>art</i> which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the &quot;Provincial Letters&quot; of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the &quot;Arabian Nights&quot;
+or Froissart's &quot;Chronicles,&quot; are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the &quot;immortals&quot; of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his &quot;Parallel Lives&quot; of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.</p>
+
+<p>But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His &quot;Lives of
+the Caesars,&quot; like Diogenes Laertius's &quot;Lives of the Philosophers,&quot; are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of &quot;Olympian&quot; was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.</p>
+
+<p>But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.</p>
+
+<p>As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the &quot;magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers.&quot; His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.</p>
+
+<p>Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that &quot;could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience.&quot; Says Lord Brougham, &quot;It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. &quot;Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.</p>
+
+<p>But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his &quot;Regal Rome,&quot; thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that &quot;he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write.&quot; He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--&quot;De Re Rustica,&quot; written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his &quot;Divine Antiquities,&quot; in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his &quot;City of God.&quot; Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by <i>manner</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.</p>
+
+<p>Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. &quot;Institutiones Oratoriae&quot;
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the &quot;De Oratore&quot; of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.</p>
+
+<p>There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+&quot;Dialogues,&quot; intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moli&egrave;re. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+&quot;Dialogues&quot; of Lucian is the &quot;City of God&quot; by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.</p>
+
+<p>Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="full">
+<br>
+<pre>
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+</pre>
+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME
+I***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+MARY PORTER LORD,
+
+WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION
+
+AS A DEVOTED WIFE
+
+ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE
+
+OF HISTORICAL LABORS,
+
+This Work
+
+IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
+
+
+In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the "Beacon Lights
+of History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+"Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.
+
+The "Old Pagan Civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+"Ancient Achievements" and "Imperial Antiquity," the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+"Antiquity" and begins the "Middle Ages."
+
+NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.
+
+Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.
+
+The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.
+
+Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.
+
+I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.
+
+Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.
+
+And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.
+
+JOHN LORD.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+Ancient religions
+Christianity not progressive
+Jewish monotheism
+Religion of Egypt
+Its great antiquity
+Its essential features
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism
+Egyptian deities
+The worship of the sun
+The priestly caste of Egypt
+Power of the priests
+Future rewards and punishments
+Morals of the Egyptians
+Functions of the priests
+Egyptian ritual of worship
+Transmigration of souls
+Animal worship
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews
+Assyrian deities
+Phoenician deities
+Worship of the sun
+Oblations and sacrifices
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism
+Religion of the Persians
+Character of the early Iranians
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion
+Zoroaster
+Magism
+Zend-Avesta
+Dualism
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+Religions of India
+Antiquity of Brahmanism
+Sanskrit literature
+The Aryan races
+Original religion of the Aryans
+Aryan migrations
+The Vedas
+Ancient deities of India
+Laws of Menu
+Hindu pantheism
+Corruption of Brahmanism
+The Brahmanical caste
+Character of the Brahmans
+Rise of Buddhism
+Gautama
+Experiences of Gautama
+Travels of Buddha
+His religious system
+Spread of his doctrine
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism
+Nirvana
+Gloominess of Buddhism
+Buddhism as a reform of morals
+Sayings of Siddartha
+His rules
+Failure of Buddhism in India
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans
+Greek myths
+Greek priests
+Greek divinities
+Greek polytheism
+Greek mythology
+Adoption of Oriental fables
+Greek deities the creation of poets
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods
+The Olympian deities
+The minor deities
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state
+Augustine view of heathen deities
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia
+Greek festivals
+No sacred books among the Greeks
+A religion without deities
+Roman divinities
+Peculiarities of Roman worship
+Ritualism and hypocrisy
+Character of the Roman
+Authorities
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+Early condition of China
+Youth of Confucius
+His public life
+His reforms
+His fame
+His wanderings
+His old age
+His writings
+His philosophy
+His definition of a superior man
+His ethics
+His views of government
+His veneration for antiquity
+His beautiful character
+His encouragement of learning
+His character as statesman
+His exaltation of filial piety
+His exaltation of friendship
+The supremacy of the State
+Necessity of good men in office
+Peaceful policy of Confucius
+Veneration for his writings
+His posthumous influence
+Lao-tse
+Authorities
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks
+Early progress of philosophy
+The Greek philosophy
+The Ionian Sophoi
+Thales and his principles
+Anaximenes
+Diogenes of Apollonia
+Heraclitus of Ephesus
+Anaxagoras
+Anaximander
+Pythagoras and his school
+Xenophanes
+Zeno of Elea
+Empedocles and the Eleatics
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher
+Progress of scepticism
+The Sophists
+Socrates
+His exposure of error
+Socrates as moralist
+The method of Socrates
+His services to philosophy
+His disciples
+Plato
+Ideas of Plato
+Archer Butler on Plato
+Aristotle
+His services
+The syllogism
+The Epicureans
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus
+The Stoics
+Zeno
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy
+Philosophy among the Romans
+Cicero
+Epictetus
+Authorities
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+Mission of Socrates
+Era of his birth; view of his times
+His personal appearance and peculiarities
+His lofty moral character
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents
+The Sophists
+Neglect of his family
+His friendship with distinguished people
+His philosophic method
+His questions and definitions
+His contempt of theories
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science
+The Ionian philosophers
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day
+Superiority of moral truth
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity
+The "daemon" of Socrates
+His idea of God and Immortality
+Socrates a witness and agent of God
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings
+Unjust charges of his enemies
+His unpopularity
+His trial and defence
+His audacity
+His condemnation
+The dignity of his last hours
+His easy death
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus
+Posthumous influence
+Authorities
+
+
+PHIDIAS.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+General popular interest in Art
+Principles on which it is based
+Phidias taken merely as a text
+Not much known of his personal history
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor
+Definitions of the word "Art"
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace
+The glory and dignity of art
+The connection of plastic with literary art
+Architecture, the first expression of art
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces
+General features of Grecian architecture
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+  Gothic architecture
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture
+Superiority of Greek sculpture
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+  distinguished men
+The great sculptors of antiquity
+Their ideal excellence
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt
+Its gradual development in Greece
+Famous Grecian painters
+Decline of art among the Romans
+Art as seen in literature
+Literature not permanent without art
+Artists as a class
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power
+Authorities
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS.
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry
+Homer
+Greek lyrical poetry
+Pindar
+Dramatic poetry
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes
+Roman poetry
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal
+Perfection of Greek prose writers
+History: Herodotus
+Thucydides, Xenophon
+Roman historians
+Julius Caesar
+Livy
+Tacitus
+Orators
+Pericles
+Demosthenes
+Aeschines
+Cicero
+Learned men: Varro
+Seneca
+Quintilian
+Lucian
+Authorities
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+Agape, or Love Feast among the Early Christians _Frontispiece_
+_After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle_.
+
+Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris
+_After the painting by E.F. Bridgman_.
+
+Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal
+_After the painting by Henri Motte_.
+
+Apollo Belvedere
+_From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome._
+
+Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin
+_From a photograph_.
+
+The School of Plato
+_After the painting by O. Knille_.
+
+Socrates Instructing Alcibiades
+_After the painting by H.F. Schopin_.
+
+Socrates
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
+_After the painting by Hector Le Roux_.
+
+Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+  of Helen
+_After the painting by E. Pagliano_.
+
+Homer
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Demosthenes
+_From the statue in the Vatican, Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.
+
+The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?
+
+I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.
+
+The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.
+
+It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.
+
+But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.
+
+I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.
+
+The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.
+
+But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
+
+The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.
+
+The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.
+
+Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of
+beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.
+
+But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.
+
+But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.
+
+No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his "City of God," his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.
+
+We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the
+body." On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.
+
+Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.
+
+The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.
+
+The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
+
+One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.
+
+The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.
+
+"The worst form of this animal worship," says Rawlinson, "was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease."
+
+Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.
+
+The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.
+
+This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
+kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.
+
+These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.
+
+Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, "the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation." The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.
+
+In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. "In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the
+day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--"the
+prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.
+
+All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.
+
+There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, "the eldest son of Heaven," the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all
+beings," etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the
+great Hero," "the King of battles." He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+"teaches and instructs."
+
+There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.
+
+The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.
+
+An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.
+
+While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the "Father of all the gods," "the Ancient
+of days," reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.
+
+The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.
+
+With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.
+
+Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.
+
+It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.
+
+The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. "The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
+
+Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
+plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity."
+
+The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.
+
+There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.
+
+There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.
+
+The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gathas,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
+
+As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.
+
+Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
+spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.
+
+These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.
+
+Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
+says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gathas. "I worship,"
+said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.
+
+"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
+
+The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gathas. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.
+
+Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
+
+The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
+
+Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.
+
+Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
+
+The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
+
+From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max Mueller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.
+
+The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
+
+It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.
+
+Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
+
+Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
+
+It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Mueller's
+"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--
+
+"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created."
+
+But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.
+
+[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]
+
+As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.
+
+It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
+Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.
+
+In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
+who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal."
+
+[Footnote 3: Rawlinson, p. 121.]
+[Footnote 4: Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.]
+[Footnote 5: Mueller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.]
+
+In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.
+
+Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--"an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires."
+
+This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.
+
+The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.
+
+In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--
+
+"To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness."
+
+Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. "From his high birth," says Menu, "a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.
+
+But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.
+
+But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.
+
+     "He who through knowledge or religious acts
+     Henceforth attains to immortality,
+     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee."
+
+Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on "The Blood Covenant," thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.
+
+Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. "We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry." This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.
+
+Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.
+
+But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.
+
+In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
+
+Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the "Enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called Sakyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the Sakyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of Sakya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.
+
+The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Siddartha, or "the perfection of all
+things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.
+
+At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.
+
+On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, "I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed."
+
+This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.
+
+The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddartha as yet is not the
+"enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.
+
+Siddartha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.
+
+Siddartha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the Bodhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.
+
+Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.
+
+The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.
+
+Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.
+
+It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
+
+Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
+
+Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.
+
+From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
+
+Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its
+emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+"body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism,"
+"a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic."
+
+Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!
+
+But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
+
+Hence the prince Siddartha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
+
+"Let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others." He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. "As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings," said Gautama, "let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me."
+
+These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is "Quietism," without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.
+
+Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God." He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.
+
+Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
+
+"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites." The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.
+
+It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+Mueller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sakoontala;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Veda; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
+
+The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.
+
+These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.
+
+This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.
+
+Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source."
+
+Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.
+
+In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.
+
+The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.
+
+Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.
+
+Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.
+
+Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.
+
+Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.
+
+Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.
+
+Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.
+
+Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.
+
+Artemis (Roman Diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo." She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.
+
+Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.
+
+Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.
+
+Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.
+
+Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.
+
+Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.
+
+The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.
+
+He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.
+
+Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the "Arabian Nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.
+
+As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.
+
+On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, "The City of God," he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.
+
+But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.
+
+If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.
+
+The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.
+
+Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--
+
+     "All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,
+     Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;
+     But, animate with deity alone,
+     In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."
+
+If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other "divine" productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.
+
+It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.
+
+Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.
+
+The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The "heathen Chinee" fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.
+
+The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.
+
+This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man." In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.
+
+That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.
+
+It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.
+
+And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.
+
+It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.
+
+There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the _Penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a _Lar_, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.
+
+The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.
+
+The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.
+
+Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.
+
+If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.
+
+If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of
+the world"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max Mueller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+Doellinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.
+
+
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+550-478 B.C.
+
+About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.
+
+"Confucius" is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.
+
+We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.
+
+But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.
+
+To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. "Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'"
+
+Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.
+
+At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.
+
+At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.
+
+On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.
+
+These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.
+
+But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.
+
+In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.
+
+At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.
+
+The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.
+
+In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said,
+"Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?"
+
+The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.
+
+Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, "I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker." If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.
+
+Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.
+
+And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+"superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied,
+"Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit." Again he said, "It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail." The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'" Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant." Thus he talks like Solomon.
+"Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'" Of a virtuous prince, he said: "In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just."
+
+It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: "It is to be heard of through the family and State." The master
+replied: "That is notoriety, not distinction." Again he said: "Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?" Again, "If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?" There is great force in this
+saying: "The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease." A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: "He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland." And, "The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "If a man," he said,
+"take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand." And again, "He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: "Specious words confound virtue." "Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "Virtue," the master
+said, "is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue." This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "There are three
+things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness."
+
+I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+"I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration." Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, "If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?" The master replied: "I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat." Here something like wit and irony break
+out: "A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'"
+
+When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: "Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted." When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: "Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents." "But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?" asked the duke. "Raise to office those whom you do know," The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "The art of
+government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?" This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal." This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.
+
+Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: "It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right." Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: "It is to love all men." Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: "Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself." This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+"Cast not your pearls before swine." There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: "What do you say about the treatment of injuries?" The master
+answered: "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness." Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount "When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again."
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: "The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: "Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented."
+
+Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.
+
+The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.
+
+Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner"
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.
+
+Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The "superior man," who next to
+the "sage" holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.
+
+In "The Great Learning" Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. "Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness."
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous."
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.
+
+The next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the
+person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.
+
+The height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "Happy,"
+says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers."
+
+While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.
+
+But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. "Friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick." One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends."
+
+Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. "No virtue," said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+"is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men." When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, "Enrich them;" and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, "Teach them." On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.
+
+Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.
+
+The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+"Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." Here
+we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.
+
+As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "I am,"
+said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.
+
+The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+"Book of Changes" (Yin-King), the "Book of Poetry" (She-King), the "Book
+of History" (Shoo-King), the "Book of Rites" (Le-King), the "Great
+Learning" (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+"Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of
+conduct, and the "Confucian Analects" (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!
+
+No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--"The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius." No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.
+
+This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.
+
+Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+
+Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.
+
+The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.
+
+Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!
+
+In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.
+
+We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.
+
+     "And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
+     Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark
+     Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea."
+
+He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "Philosophy," it has
+been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.
+
+Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.
+
+Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. "For," says he, "man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+_intelligence_. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: "It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute."
+
+Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. "If Anaximenes," says Maurice, not very clearly, "discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all." To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. "From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion," says Archer Butler, "Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas."
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.
+
+Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but
+rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.
+
+In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that _The Infinite_ is the origin of all
+things. He used the word _[Greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+"elements" could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+_deduction_. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.
+
+This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres."
+
+Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of _Kosmos_.
+
+Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.
+
+Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that _number_ is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. "It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him."
+
+We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.
+
+The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--
+
+     "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
+     As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
+     Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
+
+And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--
+
+     "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
+     And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;
+     But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
+     Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
+
+Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+_One_, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.
+
+Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_;
+the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
+
+Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.
+
+Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.
+
+Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "To
+philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity."
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.
+
+Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.
+
+This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.
+
+These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
+
+The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
+
+Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
+angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk."
+
+Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
+
+So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.
+
+These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.
+
+The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre."
+
+Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
+
+It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
+contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
+
+"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics."
+
+Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
+
+Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
+
+"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
+
+That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
+
+The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
+
+These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...
+
+Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.
+
+The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
+
+"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement."
+
+He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
+
+"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy."
+
+There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.
+
+With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.
+
+Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
+
+Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
+_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.
+
+Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
+
+Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.
+
+The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
+
+"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist."
+
+The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
+
+The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.
+
+Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
+and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.
+
+Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.
+
+With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
+fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
+
+The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.
+
+Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.
+
+Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
+
+The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.
+
+But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.
+
+Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
+
+There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
+
+Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
+
+Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.
+
+Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
+
+If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.
+
+The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.
+
+Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
+admiration.
+
+Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
+
+We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
+
+The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.
+
+The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. Mueller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
+
+
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+470-399 B.C.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
+
+He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.
+
+It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
+
+He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in "good society."
+
+The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
+
+But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
+
+His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.
+
+He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
+
+And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.
+
+To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.
+
+But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
+
+In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.
+
+So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.
+
+Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
+
+How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
+as what his _aim_ was.
+
+The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.
+
+Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
+
+Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.
+
+Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
+enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.
+
+Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.
+
+Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out."
+
+The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
+
+     "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
+beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
+
+But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
+
+Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
+any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+
+It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
+
+So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.
+
+Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.
+
+In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
+
+Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
+
+We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.
+
+So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
+
+His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.
+
+
+
+
+PHIDIAS
+
+500-430 B.C.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+
+I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-a-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.
+
+It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.
+
+The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
+
+Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
+
+Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.
+
+But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.
+
+"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.
+
+The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
+
+Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.
+
+Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
+
+But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.
+
+After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.
+
+It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.
+
+The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions." And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?
+
+The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital."
+
+The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.
+
+But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, "Life is short, but Art is long."
+
+But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.
+
+But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. "Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur."
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous _Hercules_ and the _Torso Belvedere_ are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the _Colossus of Rhodes_, the _Laocooen_,
+and the _Dying Gladiator_. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.
+
+But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The _Olympian Jove_ of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the _Venus_ of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's _Greek Slave_. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.
+
+I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.
+
+It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.
+
+Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+"fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.
+
+With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called "tone." He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The _Helen_ of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.
+
+But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that
+artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from
+character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.
+
+After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.
+
+We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.
+
+But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.
+
+It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Stael, and Macaulay, in our times.
+
+But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and Fenelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.
+
+Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.
+
+Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Mueller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+Mueller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfancon's Antiquite Expliquee en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS:
+
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+
+We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on "Ancient Religions." There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.
+
+Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.
+
+How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.
+
+We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.
+
+In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.
+
+Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. "At his summons," says Sir Walter Scott, "the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
+
+The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at
+Colonus." Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.
+
+Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.
+
+With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.
+
+The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moliere pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.
+
+Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moliere. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his "Clouds," the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.
+
+Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
+
+The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.
+
+The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.
+
+Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.
+
+Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moliere
+has imitated him in his "Avare," and Shakspeare in his "Comedy of
+Errors." Lessing pronounces the "Captivi" to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.
+
+Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.
+
+The "Thyestes" of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.
+
+In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his "History of Roman Literature," says:--
+
+"Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased."
+
+Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.
+
+In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "Georgics" of Virgil
+and the "Satires" of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.
+
+It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.
+
+In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.
+
+In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--
+
+     "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,
+      Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
+
+Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more
+highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.
+
+Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country."
+
+Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.
+
+Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
+
+In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.
+
+I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.
+
+The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as Apollo's
+lyre." Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.
+
+All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.
+
+The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great "Father of History" is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.
+
+To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.
+
+Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.
+
+If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.
+
+As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+_strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for _eclat_.
+
+Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
+
+The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+Mueller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.
+
+The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give."
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.
+
+In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his father-in-law; his
+"Annales," which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the "Historiae," which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.
+
+Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries."
+We require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of
+Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters" of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "Arabian Nights"
+or Froissart's "Chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.
+
+A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his "Parallel Lives" of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.
+
+But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.
+
+Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.
+
+Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of
+the Caesars," like Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers," are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.
+
+It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of "Olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.
+
+But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.
+
+As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.
+
+Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience." Says Lord Brougham, "It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection."
+
+It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. "Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force."
+
+But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.
+
+Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.
+
+But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his "Regal Rome," thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--
+
+"He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion."
+
+Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.
+
+Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.
+
+In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--"De Re Rustica," written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his "Divine Antiquities," in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his "City of God." Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by _manner_.
+
+Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
+
+Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "Institutiones Oratoriae"
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the "De Oratore" of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.
+
+There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moliere. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+"Dialogues" of Lucian is the "City of God" by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
+
+Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.
+
+Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.
+
+
+
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diff --git a/10477.zip b/10477.zip
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+eBook #10477 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10477)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME
+I***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+MARY PORTER LORD,
+
+WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION
+
+AS A DEVOTED WIFE
+
+ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE
+
+OF HISTORICAL LABORS,
+
+This Work
+
+IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
+
+
+In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the "Beacon Lights
+of History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+"Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.
+
+The "Old Pagan Civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+"Ancient Achievements" and "Imperial Antiquity," the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+"Antiquity" and begins the "Middle Ages."
+
+NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.
+
+Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.
+
+The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.
+
+Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.
+
+I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.
+
+Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.
+
+And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.
+
+JOHN LORD.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+Ancient religions
+Christianity not progressive
+Jewish monotheism
+Religion of Egypt
+Its great antiquity
+Its essential features
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism
+Egyptian deities
+The worship of the sun
+The priestly caste of Egypt
+Power of the priests
+Future rewards and punishments
+Morals of the Egyptians
+Functions of the priests
+Egyptian ritual of worship
+Transmigration of souls
+Animal worship
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews
+Assyrian deities
+Phoenician deities
+Worship of the sun
+Oblations and sacrifices
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism
+Religion of the Persians
+Character of the early Iranians
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion
+Zoroaster
+Magism
+Zend-Avesta
+Dualism
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+Religions of India
+Antiquity of Brahmanism
+Sanskrit literature
+The Aryan races
+Original religion of the Aryans
+Aryan migrations
+The Vedas
+Ancient deities of India
+Laws of Menu
+Hindu pantheism
+Corruption of Brahmanism
+The Brahmanical caste
+Character of the Brahmans
+Rise of Buddhism
+Gautama
+Experiences of Gautama
+Travels of Buddha
+His religious system
+Spread of his doctrine
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism
+Nirvana
+Gloominess of Buddhism
+Buddhism as a reform of morals
+Sayings of Siddârtha
+His rules
+Failure of Buddhism in India
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans
+Greek myths
+Greek priests
+Greek divinities
+Greek polytheism
+Greek mythology
+Adoption of Oriental fables
+Greek deities the creation of poets
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods
+The Olympian deities
+The minor deities
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state
+Augustine view of heathen deities
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia
+Greek festivals
+No sacred books among the Greeks
+A religion without deities
+Roman divinities
+Peculiarities of Roman worship
+Ritualism and hypocrisy
+Character of the Roman
+Authorities
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+Early condition of China
+Youth of Confucius
+His public life
+His reforms
+His fame
+His wanderings
+His old age
+His writings
+His philosophy
+His definition of a superior man
+His ethics
+His views of government
+His veneration for antiquity
+His beautiful character
+His encouragement of learning
+His character as statesman
+His exaltation of filial piety
+His exaltation of friendship
+The supremacy of the State
+Necessity of good men in office
+Peaceful policy of Confucius
+Veneration for his writings
+His posthumous influence
+Lao-tse
+Authorities
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks
+Early progress of philosophy
+The Greek philosophy
+The Ionian Sophoi
+Thales and his principles
+Anaximenes
+Diogenes of Apollonia
+Heraclitus of Ephesus
+Anaxagoras
+Anaximander
+Pythagoras and his school
+Xenophanes
+Zeno of Elea
+Empedocles and the Eleatics
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher
+Progress of scepticism
+The Sophists
+Socrates
+His exposure of error
+Socrates as moralist
+The method of Socrates
+His services to philosophy
+His disciples
+Plato
+Ideas of Plato
+Archer Butler on Plato
+Aristotle
+His services
+The syllogism
+The Epicureans
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus
+The Stoics
+Zeno
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy
+Philosophy among the Romans
+Cicero
+Epictetus
+Authorities
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+Mission of Socrates
+Era of his birth; view of his times
+His personal appearance and peculiarities
+His lofty moral character
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents
+The Sophists
+Neglect of his family
+His friendship with distinguished people
+His philosophic method
+His questions and definitions
+His contempt of theories
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science
+The Ionian philosophers
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day
+Superiority of moral truth
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity
+The "daemon" of Socrates
+His idea of God and Immortality
+Socrates a witness and agent of God
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings
+Unjust charges of his enemies
+His unpopularity
+His trial and defence
+His audacity
+His condemnation
+The dignity of his last hours
+His easy death
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus
+Posthumous influence
+Authorities
+
+
+PHIDIAS.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+General popular interest in Art
+Principles on which it is based
+Phidias taken merely as a text
+Not much known of his personal history
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor
+Definitions of the word "Art"
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace
+The glory and dignity of art
+The connection of plastic with literary art
+Architecture, the first expression of art
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces
+General features of Grecian architecture
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+  Gothic architecture
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture
+Superiority of Greek sculpture
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+  distinguished men
+The great sculptors of antiquity
+Their ideal excellence
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt
+Its gradual development in Greece
+Famous Grecian painters
+Decline of art among the Romans
+Art as seen in literature
+Literature not permanent without art
+Artists as a class
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power
+Authorities
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS.
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry
+Homer
+Greek lyrical poetry
+Pindar
+Dramatic poetry
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes
+Roman poetry
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal
+Perfection of Greek prose writers
+History: Herodotus
+Thucydides, Xenophon
+Roman historians
+Julius Caesar
+Livy
+Tacitus
+Orators
+Pericles
+Demosthenes
+Aeschines
+Cicero
+Learned men: Varro
+Seneca
+Quintilian
+Lucian
+Authorities
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+Agapč, or Love Feast among the Early Christians _Frontispiece_
+_After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle_.
+
+Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris
+_After the painting by E.F. Bridgman_.
+
+Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal
+_After the painting by Henri Motte_.
+
+Apollo Belvedere
+_From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome._
+
+Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin
+_From a photograph_.
+
+The School of Plato
+_After the painting by O. Knille_.
+
+Socrates Instructing Alcibiades
+_After the painting by H.F. Schopin_.
+
+Socrates
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
+_After the painting by Hector Le Roux_.
+
+Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+  of Helen
+_After the painting by E. Pagliano_.
+
+Homer
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Demosthenes
+_From the statue in the Vatican, Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.
+
+The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?
+
+I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.
+
+The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.
+
+It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.
+
+But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.
+
+I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.
+
+The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.
+
+But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
+
+The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.
+
+The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.
+
+Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of
+beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.
+
+But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.
+
+But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.
+
+No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his "City of God," his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.
+
+We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the
+body." On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.
+
+Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.
+
+The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.
+
+The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
+
+One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.
+
+The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.
+
+"The worst form of this animal worship," says Rawlinson, "was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease."
+
+Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.
+
+The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.
+
+This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
+kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.
+
+These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.
+
+Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, "the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation." The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.
+
+In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. "In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the
+day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--"the
+prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.
+
+All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.
+
+There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, "the eldest son of Heaven," the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all
+beings," etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the
+great Hero," "the King of battles." He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+"teaches and instructs."
+
+There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.
+
+The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.
+
+An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.
+
+While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the "Father of all the gods," "the Ancient
+of days," reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.
+
+The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.
+
+With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.
+
+Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.
+
+It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.
+
+The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. "The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
+
+Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
+plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity."
+
+The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.
+
+There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.
+
+There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.
+
+The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gâthâs,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
+
+As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.
+
+Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
+spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.
+
+These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.
+
+Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
+says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gâthâs. "I worship,"
+said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.
+
+"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
+
+The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.
+
+Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
+
+The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
+
+Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.
+
+Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
+
+The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
+
+From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max Müller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.
+
+The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
+
+It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.
+
+Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
+
+Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
+
+It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Müller's
+"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--
+
+"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created."
+
+But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.
+
+[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]
+
+As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.
+
+It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
+Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.
+
+In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
+who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal."
+
+[Footnote 3: Rawlinson, p. 121.]
+[Footnote 4: Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.]
+[Footnote 5: Müller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.]
+
+In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.
+
+Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--"an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires."
+
+This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.
+
+The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.
+
+In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--
+
+"To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness."
+
+Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. "From his high birth," says Menu, "a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.
+
+But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.
+
+But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.
+
+     "He who through knowledge or religious acts
+     Henceforth attains to immortality,
+     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee."
+
+Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on "The Blood Covenant," thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.
+
+Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. "We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry." This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.
+
+Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.
+
+But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.
+
+In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
+
+Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the "Enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called Sâkyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the Sâkyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of Sâkya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.
+
+The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Siddârtha, or "the perfection of all
+things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.
+
+At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.
+
+On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, "I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed."
+
+This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.
+
+The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddârtha as yet is not the
+"enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.
+
+Siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.
+
+Siddârtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the Bôdhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.
+
+Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.
+
+The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.
+
+Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.
+
+It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
+
+Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
+
+Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.
+
+From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
+
+Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its
+emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+"body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism,"
+"a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic."
+
+Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!
+
+But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
+
+Hence the prince Siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
+
+"Let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others." He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. "As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings," said Gautama, "let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me."
+
+These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is "Quietism," without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.
+
+Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God." He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.
+
+Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
+
+"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites." The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.
+
+It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sákoontalá;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Vęda; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
+
+The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.
+
+These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.
+
+This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.
+
+Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source."
+
+Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.
+
+In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.
+
+The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.
+
+Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.
+
+Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.
+
+Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.
+
+Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.
+
+Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.
+
+Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.
+
+Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.
+
+Artemis (Roman Diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo." She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.
+
+Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.
+
+Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.
+
+Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.
+
+Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.
+
+Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.
+
+The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.
+
+He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.
+
+Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the "Arabian Nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.
+
+As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.
+
+On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, "The City of God," he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.
+
+But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.
+
+If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.
+
+The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.
+
+Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--
+
+     "All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,
+     Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;
+     But, animate with deity alone,
+     In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."
+
+If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other "divine" productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.
+
+It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.
+
+Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.
+
+The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The "heathen Chinee" fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.
+
+The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.
+
+This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man." In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.
+
+That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.
+
+It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.
+
+And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.
+
+It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.
+
+There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the _Penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a _Lar_, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.
+
+The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.
+
+The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.
+
+Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.
+
+If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.
+
+If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of
+the world"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max Müller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+Döllinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.
+
+
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+550-478 B.C.
+
+About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.
+
+"Confucius" is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.
+
+We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.
+
+But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.
+
+To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. "Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'"
+
+Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.
+
+At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.
+
+At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.
+
+On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.
+
+These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.
+
+But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.
+
+In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.
+
+At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.
+
+The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.
+
+In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said,
+"Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?"
+
+The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.
+
+Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, "I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker." If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.
+
+Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.
+
+And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+"superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied,
+"Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit." Again he said, "It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail." The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'" Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant." Thus he talks like Solomon.
+"Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'" Of a virtuous prince, he said: "In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just."
+
+It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: "It is to be heard of through the family and State." The master
+replied: "That is notoriety, not distinction." Again he said: "Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?" Again, "If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?" There is great force in this
+saying: "The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease." A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: "He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland." And, "The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "If a man," he said,
+"take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand." And again, "He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: "Specious words confound virtue." "Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "Virtue," the master
+said, "is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue." This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "There are three
+things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness."
+
+I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+"I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration." Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, "If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?" The master replied: "I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat." Here something like wit and irony break
+out: "A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'"
+
+When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: "Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted." When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: "Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents." "But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?" asked the duke. "Raise to office those whom you do know," The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "The art of
+government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?" This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal." This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.
+
+Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: "It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right." Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: "It is to love all men." Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: "Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself." This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+"Cast not your pearls before swine." There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: "What do you say about the treatment of injuries?" The master
+answered: "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness." Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount "When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again."
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: "The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: "Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented."
+
+Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.
+
+The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.
+
+Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner"
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.
+
+Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The "superior man," who next to
+the "sage" holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.
+
+In "The Great Learning" Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. "Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness."
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous."
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.
+
+The next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the
+person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.
+
+The height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "Happy,"
+says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers."
+
+While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.
+
+But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. "Friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick." One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends."
+
+Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. "No virtue," said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+"is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men." When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, "Enrich them;" and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, "Teach them." On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.
+
+Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.
+
+The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+"Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." Here
+we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.
+
+As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "I am,"
+said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.
+
+The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+"Book of Changes" (Yin-King), the "Book of Poetry" (She-King), the "Book
+of History" (Shoo-King), the "Book of Rites" (Le-King), the "Great
+Learning" (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+"Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of
+conduct, and the "Confucian Analects" (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!
+
+No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--"The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius." No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.
+
+This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.
+
+Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+
+Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.
+
+The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.
+
+Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!
+
+In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.
+
+We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.
+
+     "And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
+     Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark
+     Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea."
+
+He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "Philosophy," it has
+been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.
+
+Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.
+
+Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. "For," says he, "man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+_intelligence_. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: "It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute."
+
+Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. "If Anaximenes," says Maurice, not very clearly, "discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all." To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. "From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion," says Archer Butler, "Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas."
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.
+
+Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but
+rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.
+
+In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that _The Infinite_ is the origin of all
+things. He used the word _[Greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+"elements" could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+_deduction_. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.
+
+This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres."
+
+Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of _Kosmos_.
+
+Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.
+
+Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that _number_ is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. "It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him."
+
+We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.
+
+The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--
+
+     "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
+     As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
+     Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
+
+And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--
+
+     "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
+     And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;
+     But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
+     Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
+
+Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+_One_, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.
+
+Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_;
+the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
+
+Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.
+
+Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.
+
+Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "To
+philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity."
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.
+
+Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.
+
+This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.
+
+These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
+
+The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
+
+Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
+angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk."
+
+Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
+
+So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.
+
+These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.
+
+The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre."
+
+Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
+
+It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
+contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
+
+"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics."
+
+Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
+
+Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
+
+"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
+
+That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
+
+The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
+
+These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...
+
+Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.
+
+The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
+
+"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement."
+
+He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
+
+"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy."
+
+There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.
+
+With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.
+
+Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
+
+Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
+_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.
+
+Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
+
+Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.
+
+The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
+
+"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist."
+
+The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
+
+The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.
+
+Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
+and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.
+
+Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.
+
+With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
+fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
+
+The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.
+
+Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.
+
+Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
+
+The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.
+
+But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.
+
+Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
+
+There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
+
+Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
+
+Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.
+
+Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
+
+If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.
+
+The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.
+
+Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
+admiration.
+
+Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
+
+We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
+
+The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.
+
+The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. Müller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
+
+
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+470-399 B.C.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
+
+He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.
+
+It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
+
+He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in "good society."
+
+The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
+
+But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
+
+His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.
+
+He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
+
+And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.
+
+To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.
+
+But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
+
+In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.
+
+So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.
+
+Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
+
+How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
+as what his _aim_ was.
+
+The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.
+
+Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
+
+Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.
+
+Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
+enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.
+
+Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.
+
+Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out."
+
+The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
+
+     "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
+beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
+
+But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
+
+Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
+any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+
+It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
+
+So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.
+
+Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.
+
+In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
+
+Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
+
+We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.
+
+So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
+
+His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.
+
+
+
+
+PHIDIAS
+
+500-430 B.C.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+
+I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.
+
+It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.
+
+The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
+
+Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
+
+Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.
+
+But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.
+
+"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.
+
+The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
+
+Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.
+
+Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
+
+But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.
+
+After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.
+
+It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.
+
+The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions." And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?
+
+The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital."
+
+The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.
+
+But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, "Life is short, but Art is long."
+
+But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.
+
+But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. "Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur."
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous _Hercules_ and the _Torso Belvedere_ are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the _Colossus of Rhodes_, the _Laocoön_,
+and the _Dying Gladiator_. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.
+
+But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The _Olympian Jove_ of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the _Venus_ of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's _Greek Slave_. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.
+
+I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.
+
+It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.
+
+Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+"fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.
+
+With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called "tone." He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The _Helen_ of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.
+
+But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that
+artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from
+character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.
+
+After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.
+
+We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.
+
+But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.
+
+It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Staël, and Macaulay, in our times.
+
+But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and Fénelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.
+
+Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.
+
+Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Müller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+Müller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfançon's Antiquité Expliquée en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS:
+
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+
+We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on "Ancient Religions." There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.
+
+Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.
+
+How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.
+
+We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.
+
+In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.
+
+Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. "At his summons," says Sir Walter Scott, "the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
+
+The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at
+Colonus." Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.
+
+Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.
+
+With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.
+
+The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moličre pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.
+
+Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moličre. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his "Clouds," the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.
+
+Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
+
+The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.
+
+The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.
+
+Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.
+
+Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moličre
+has imitated him in his "Avare," and Shakspeare in his "Comedy of
+Errors." Lessing pronounces the "Captivi" to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.
+
+Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.
+
+The "Thyestes" of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.
+
+In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his "History of Roman Literature," says:--
+
+"Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased."
+
+Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.
+
+In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "Georgics" of Virgil
+and the "Satires" of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.
+
+It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.
+
+In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.
+
+In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--
+
+     "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucretî,
+      Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
+
+Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more
+highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.
+
+Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country."
+
+Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.
+
+Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
+
+In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.
+
+I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.
+
+The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as Apollo's
+lyre." Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.
+
+All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.
+
+The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great "Father of History" is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.
+
+To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.
+
+Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.
+
+If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.
+
+As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+_strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for _éclat_.
+
+Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
+
+The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+Müller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.
+
+The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give."
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.
+
+In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his father-in-law; his
+"Annales," which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the "Historiae," which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.
+
+Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries."
+We require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of
+Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters" of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "Arabian Nights"
+or Froissart's "Chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.
+
+A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his "Parallel Lives" of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.
+
+But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.
+
+Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.
+
+Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of
+the Caesars," like Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers," are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.
+
+It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of "Olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.
+
+But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.
+
+As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.
+
+Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience." Says Lord Brougham, "It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection."
+
+It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. "Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force."
+
+But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.
+
+Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.
+
+But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his "Regal Rome," thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--
+
+"He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion."
+
+Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.
+
+Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.
+
+In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--"De Re Rustica," written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his "Divine Antiquities," in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his "City of God." Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by _manner_.
+
+Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
+
+Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "Institutiones Oratoriae"
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the "De Oratore" of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.
+
+There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moličre. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+"Dialogues" of Lucian is the "City of God" by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
+
+Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.
+
+Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I***
+
+
+</pre>
+<center><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full">
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><i>LORD'S LECTURES</i></center>
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.</h2>
+
+
+<h2>BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,</h2>
+
+<center>AUTHOR OF &quot;THE OLD ROMAN WORLD,&quot; &quot;MODERN EUROPE,&quot;
+ETC., ETC.</center>
+<br><br>
+
+<h2>VOLUME I.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>To the Memory of</h2>
+
+<center>MARY PORTER LORD,</center>
+
+<center>WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION</center>
+
+<center>AS A DEVOTED WIFE</center>
+
+<center>ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE</center>
+
+<center>OF HISTORICAL LABORS,</center>
+
+<center>This Work</center>
+
+<center>IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED</center>
+
+<center>BY THE AUTHOR.</center>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>PUBLISHERS' NOTE.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the &quot;Beacon Lights
+of History,&quot; it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+&quot;Antiquity,&quot; and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of &quot;Old Pagan Civilizations&quot; (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the &quot;Jewish Heroes and Prophets.&quot; These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Old Pagan Civilizations,&quot; of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on &quot;Jewish Heroes and Prophets,&quot; ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+&quot;Ancient Achievements&quot; and &quot;Imperial Antiquity,&quot; the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+&quot;Antiquity&quot; and begins the &quot;Middle Ages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHOR'S PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.</p>
+
+<p>Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.</p>
+
+<p>The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.</p>
+
+<p>I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.</p>
+
+<p>Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.</p>
+
+<p>And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for <i>services</i> that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN LORD.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>VOL. I.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<h2>THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_RELIGIONS">ANCIENT RELIGIONS</a></i>:</p>
+
+<p>EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.</p>
+
+Ancient religions<br>
+Christianity not progressive<br>
+Jewish monotheism<br>
+Religion of Egypt<br>
+Its great antiquity<br>
+Its essential features<br>
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism<br>
+Egyptian deities<br>
+The worship of the sun<br>
+The priestly caste of Egypt<br>
+Power of the priests<br>
+Future rewards and punishments<br>
+Morals of the Egyptians<br>
+Functions of the priests<br>
+Egyptian ritual of worship<br>
+Transmigration of souls<br>
+Animal worship<br>
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews<br>
+Assyrian deities<br>
+Phoenician deities<br>
+Worship of the sun<br>
+Oblations and sacrifices<br>
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism<br>
+Religion of the Persians<br>
+Character of the early Iranians<br>
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion<br>
+Zoroaster<br>
+Magism<br>
+Zend-Avesta<br>
+Dualism<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_RELIGIONS">RELIGIONS OF INDIA</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.</p>
+
+Religions of India<br>
+Antiquity of Brahmanism<br>
+Sanskrit literature<br>
+The Aryan races<br>
+Original religion of the Aryans<br>
+Aryan migrations<br>
+The Vedas<br>
+Ancient deities of India<br>
+Laws of Menu<br>
+Hindu pantheism<br>
+Corruption of Brahmanism<br>
+The Brahmanical caste<br>
+Character of the Brahmans<br>
+Rise of Buddhism<br>
+Gautama<br>
+Experiences of Gautama<br>
+Travels of Buddha<br>
+His religious system<br>
+Spread of his doctrine<br>
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism<br>
+Nirvana<br>
+Gloominess of Buddhism<br>
+Buddhism as a reform of morals<br>
+Sayings of Sidd&acirc;rtha<br>
+His rules<br>
+Failure of Buddhism in India<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#RELIGION_OF_THE_GREEKS_AND_ROMANS.">RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.</p>
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans<br>
+Greek myths<br>
+Greek priests<br>
+Greek divinities<br>
+Greek polytheism<br>
+Greek mythology<br>
+Adoption of Oriental fables<br>
+Greek deities the creation of poets<br>
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods<br>
+The Olympian deities<br>
+The minor deities<br>
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state<br>
+Augustine view of heathen deities<br>
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine<br>
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia<br>
+Greek festivals<br>
+No sacred books among the Greeks<br>
+A religion without deities<br>
+Roman divinities<br>
+Peculiarities of Roman worship<br>
+Ritualism and hypocrisy<br>
+Character of the Roman<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#CONFUCIUS.">CONFUCIUS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>SAGE AND MORALIST.</p>
+
+Early condition of China<br>
+Youth of Confucius<br>
+His public life<br>
+His reforms<br>
+His fame<br>
+His wanderings<br>
+His old age<br>
+His writings<br>
+His philosophy<br>
+His definition of a superior man<br>
+His ethics<br>
+His views of government<br>
+His veneration for antiquity<br>
+His beautiful character<br>
+His encouragement of learning<br>
+His character as statesman<br>
+His exaltation of filial piety<br>
+His exaltation of friendship<br>
+The supremacy of the State<br>
+Necessity of good men in office<br>
+Peaceful policy of Confucius<br>
+Veneration for his writings<br>
+His posthumous influence<br>
+Lao-tse<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#ANCIENT_PHILOSOPHY.">ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.</p>
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks<br>
+Early progress of philosophy<br>
+The Greek philosophy<br>
+The Ionian Sophoi<br>
+Thales and his principles<br>
+Anaximenes<br>
+Diogenes of Apollonia<br>
+Heraclitus of Ephesus<br>
+Anaxagoras<br>
+Anaximander<br>
+Pythagoras and his school<br>
+Xenophanes<br>
+Zeno of Elea<br>
+Empedocles and the Eleatics<br>
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher<br>
+Progress of scepticism<br>
+The Sophists<br>
+Socrates<br>
+His exposure of error<br>
+Socrates as moralist<br>
+The method of Socrates<br>
+His services to philosophy<br>
+His disciples<br>
+Plato<br>
+Ideas of Plato<br>
+Archer Butler on Plato<br>
+Aristotle<br>
+His services<br>
+The syllogism<br>
+The Epicureans<br>
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus<br>
+The Stoics<br>
+Zeno<br>
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy<br>
+Philosophy among the Romans<br>
+Cicero<br>
+Epictetus<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#SOCRATES.">SOCRATES</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+
+Mission of Socrates<br>
+Era of his birth; view of his times<br>
+His personal appearance and peculiarities<br>
+His lofty moral character<br>
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents<br>
+The Sophists<br>
+Neglect of his family<br>
+His friendship with distinguished people<br>
+His philosophic method<br>
+His questions and definitions<br>
+His contempt of theories<br>
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science<br>
+The Ionian philosophers<br>
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness<br>
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day<br>
+Superiority of moral truth<br>
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity<br>
+The &quot;daemon&quot; of Socrates<br>
+His idea of God and Immortality<br>
+Socrates a witness and agent of God<br>
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius<br>
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings<br>
+Unjust charges of his enemies<br>
+His unpopularity<br>
+His trial and defence<br>
+His audacity<br>
+His condemnation<br>
+The dignity of his last hours<br>
+His easy death<br>
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus<br>
+Posthumous influence<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#PHIDIAS">PHIDIAS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK ART.</p>
+
+General popular interest in Art<br>
+Principles on which it is based<br>
+Phidias taken merely as a text<br>
+Not much known of his personal history<br>
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove<br>
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor<br>
+Definitions of the word &quot;Art&quot;<br>
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace<br>
+The glory and dignity of art<br>
+The connection of plastic with literary art<br>
+Architecture, the first expression of art<br>
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture<br>
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces<br>
+General features of Grecian architecture<br>
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders<br>
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...<br>
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+Gothic architecture<br>
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture<br>
+Superiority of Greek sculpture<br>
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+distinguished men<br>
+The great sculptors of antiquity<br>
+Their ideal excellence<br>
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt<br>
+Its gradual development in Greece<br>
+Famous Grecian painters<br>
+Decline of art among the Romans<br>
+Art as seen in literature<br>
+Literature not permanent without art<br>
+Artists as a class<br>
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power<br>
+Authorities<br>
+<br>
+
+<p><i><a href="#LITERARY_GENIUS:">LITERARY GENIUS</a></i>.</p>
+
+<p>THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.</p>
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry<br>
+Homer<br>
+Greek lyrical poetry<br>
+Pindar<br>
+Dramatic poetry<br>
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides<br>
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes<br>
+Roman poetry<br>
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence<br>
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil<br>
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus<br>
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius<br>
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus<br>
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal<br>
+Perfection of Greek prose writers<br>
+History: Herodotus<br>
+Thucydides, Xenophon<br>
+Roman historians<br>
+Julius Caesar<br>
+Livy<br>
+Tacitus<br>
+Orators<br>
+Pericles<br>
+Demosthenes<br>
+Aeschines<br>
+Cicero<br>
+Learned men: Varro<br>
+Seneca<br>
+Quintilian<br>
+Lucian<br>
+Authorities<br>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<p>VOLUME I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Agap&egrave;,_or_Love_Feast_among_the_Early_Christians"></a><a href="images/Illus0369.jpg">Agap&egrave;, or Love Feast among the Early Christians</a> <i>Frontispiece</i>
+<i>After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Procession_of_the_Sacred_Bull_Apis-Osiris"></a><a href="images/Illus0368.jpg">Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris</a>
+<i>After the painting by E.F. Bridgman</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Driving_Sacrificial_Victims_into_the_Fiery_Mouth_of_Baal"></a><a href="images/Illus0370.jpg">Driving_Sacrificial_Victims_into_the_Fiery_Mouth_of_Baal</a>
+<i>After the painting by Henri Motte</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Apollo_Belvedere"></a><a href="images/Illus0367.jpg">Apollo Belvedere</a>
+<i>From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="Confucian_Temple,_Forbidden_City,_Pekin"></a><a href="images/Illus0366.jpg">Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin</a>
+<i>From a photograph</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="The_School_of_Plato"></a><a href="images/Illus0365.jpg">The School of Plato</a>
+<i>After the painting by O. Knille</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Socrates_Instructing_Alcibiades"></a><a href="images/Illus0364.jpg">Socrates Instructing Alcibiades</a>
+<i>After the painting by H.F. Schopin</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name=">Socrates"></a><a href="images/Illus0363.jpg">Socrates</a>
+<i>From the bust in the National Museum, Naples</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Pericles_and_Aspasia_in_the_Studio_of_Phidias"></a><a href="images/Illus0362.jpg">Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias</a>
+<i>After the painting by Hector Le Roux</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Zeuxis_Choosing_Models_from_among_the_Beauties_of_Kroton_for_his_Picture
+of_Helen"></a><a href="images/Illus0361.jpg">Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+of Helen</a>
+<i>After the painting by E. Pagliano</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Homer"></a><a href="images/Illus0360.jpg">Homer</a>
+<i>From the bust in the National Museum, Naples</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Demosthenes"></a><a href="images/Illus0359.jpg">Demosthenes</a>
+<i>From the statue in the Vatican, Rome</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="ANCIENT_RELIGIONS"></a>ANCIENT RELIGIONS:</h2>
+<br>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.</p>
+
+<p>The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?</p>
+
+<p>I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.</p>
+
+<p>I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.</p>
+
+<p>But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.</p>
+
+<p>Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, &quot;the father of
+beginnings;&quot; his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.</p>
+
+<p>But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.</p>
+
+<p>No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his &quot;City of God,&quot; his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments &quot;according to the deeds done in the
+body.&quot; On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.</p>
+
+<p>The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+&quot;Religious observances,&quot; says Freeman Clarke, &quot;were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation.&quot;
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.</p>
+
+<p>The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The worst form of this animal worship,&quot; says Rawlinson, &quot;was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.</p>
+
+<p>This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was &quot;Asshur, my Lord.&quot; He was also called &quot;King of
+kings,&quot; reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+&quot;Father of the gods.&quot; His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.</p>
+
+<p>These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning &quot;Lord,&quot; the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.</p>
+
+<p>Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, &quot;the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation.&quot; The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.</p>
+
+<p>In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. &quot;In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day.&quot; Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, &quot;the lord of fire,&quot; &quot;the ruler of the
+day,&quot; was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--&quot;the
+prince of the power of the air,&quot; destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, &quot;the lord of fecundity,&quot; he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.</p>
+
+<p>All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.</p>
+
+<p>There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, &quot;the eldest son of Heaven,&quot; the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as &quot;King of heaven and earth,&quot; the &quot;Lord of all
+beings,&quot; etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying &quot;the
+great Hero,&quot; &quot;the King of battles.&quot; He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+&quot;teaches and instructs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.</p>
+
+<p>The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.</p>
+
+<p>An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.</p>
+
+<p>While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the &quot;Father of all the gods,&quot; &quot;the Ancient
+of days,&quot; reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.</p>
+
+<p>The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.</p>
+
+<p>Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. &quot;The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other.&quot; It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.</p>
+
+<p>Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. &quot;The whole
+plateau of Iran,&quot; says Johnson, &quot;was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! &quot;These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil.&quot; Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.</p>
+
+<p>There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. <i>Zend</i> is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the G&acirc;th&acirc;s,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.</p>
+
+<p>As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.</p>
+
+<p>Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the &quot;Much-knowing
+spirit,&quot; or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--&quot;the creator of life,&quot; who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.</p>
+
+<p>These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. &quot;From the sun,&quot;
+says the Avesta, &quot;are all things sought that can be desired.&quot; To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the G&acirc;th&acirc;s. &quot;I worship,&quot;
+said he, &quot;the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose.&quot; Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+&quot;In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule.&quot; From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: &quot;I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd.&quot; It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph.&quot; <a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.
+
+<p>The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the G&acirc;th&acirc;s. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.</p>
+
+<p>The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="RELIGIONS_OF_INDIA."></a>RELIGIONS OF INDIA.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.</p>
+
+<p>That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the &quot;lust of the eye and the pride of life,&quot; rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.</p>
+
+<p>Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.</p>
+
+<p>The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.</p>
+
+<p>From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max M&uuml;ller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.</p>
+
+<p>The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.</p>
+
+<p>It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin <i>ignis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the <i>animus mundi</i>. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from M&uuml;ller's
+&quot;Ancient Sanskrit Literature&quot; one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.
+
+<p>As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. &quot;There is no recognition,&quot; says
+Monier Williams, &quot;of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature.&quot; There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.</p>
+
+<p>In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. &quot;The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed,&quot; <a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>,
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. &quot;He
+who gives alms,&quot; says one poet, &quot;goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>.... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> Rawlinson, p. 121.<br>
+<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.<br>
+<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> M&uuml;ller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.<br>
+
+<p>In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.</p>
+
+<p>Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--&quot;an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.</p>
+
+<p>In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. &quot;From his high birth,&quot; says Menu, &quot;a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities.&quot; Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.</p>
+
+<p>But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.</p>
+
+<p>But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;He who through knowledge or religious acts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Henceforth attains to immortality,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shall first present his body, Death, to thee.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on &quot;The Blood Covenant,&quot; thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of <i>life</i>) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. &quot;We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry.&quot; This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is <i>being</i>, but not <i>existence</i>. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.</p>
+
+<p>In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. &quot;The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves.&quot; The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the &quot;Enlightened,&quot;--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called S&acirc;kyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the S&acirc;kyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of S&acirc;kya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.</p>
+
+<p>The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Sidd&acirc;rtha, or &quot;the perfection of all
+things.&quot; His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.</p>
+
+<p>At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a <i>deva</i>, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a <i>deva</i> contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a <i>deva</i>, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, &quot;I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.</p>
+
+<p>The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Sidd&acirc;rtha as yet is not the
+&quot;enlightened,&quot;--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.</p>
+
+<p>Sidd&acirc;rtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.</p>
+
+<p>Sidd&acirc;rtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the B&ocirc;dhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even <i>temperance</i>,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.</p>
+
+<p>It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--<i>practical</i> and <i>speculative</i>. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.</p>
+
+<p>From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the &quot;total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man.&quot; This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the &quot;spirit&quot; the immortal part of man, the &quot;soul&quot; being its
+emotional embodiment, its &quot;spiritual body,&quot; whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+&quot;body,&quot;--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's &quot;Buddhist Catechism,&quot;
+&quot;a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!</p>
+
+<p>But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the prince Sidd&acirc;rtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us then,&quot; said he, &quot;live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others.&quot; He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. &quot;As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings,&quot; said Gautama, &quot;let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is &quot;Quietism,&quot; without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but &quot;he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God.&quot; He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Buddhism,&quot; says the author of its accepted catechism, &quot;teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites.&quot; The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.</p>
+
+<p>It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+M&uuml;ller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's S&aacute;koontal&aacute;;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la V&ecirc;da; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="RELIGION_OF_THE_GREEKS_AND_ROMANS."></a>RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.</p>
+
+<p>Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim &quot;to raise mortals to the skies,&quot; but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.</p>
+
+<p>These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. &quot;Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods.&quot; Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.</p>
+
+<p>This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, &quot;the Father of gods and men,&quot; to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.</p>
+
+<p>Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. &quot;The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.</p>
+
+<p>Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.</p>
+
+<p>Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.</p>
+
+<p>Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.</p>
+
+<p>Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.</p>
+
+<p>Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.</p>
+
+<p>Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>Artemis (Roman Diana) was &quot;a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo.&quot; She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.</p>
+
+<p>Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.</p>
+
+<p>Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.</p>
+
+<p>Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.</p>
+
+<p>Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.</p>
+
+<p>Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.</p>
+
+<p>The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.</p>
+
+<p>He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the &quot;Arabian Nights,&quot; it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.</p>
+
+<p>As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.</p>
+
+<p>On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, &quot;The City of God,&quot; he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.</p>
+
+<p>But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.</p>
+
+<p>If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.</p>
+
+<p>The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But, animate with deity alone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other &quot;divine&quot; productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.</p>
+
+<p>The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The &quot;heathen Chinee&quot; fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.</p>
+
+<p>The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, &quot;Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man.&quot; In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.</p>
+
+<p>That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate &quot;division of labor&quot; among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.</p>
+
+<p>There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the <i>Penates</i>, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a <i>Lar</i>, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.</p>
+
+<p>The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.</p>
+
+<p>The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: &quot;Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful.&quot; An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.</p>
+
+<p>If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the &quot;light of
+the world&quot;!</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max M&uuml;ller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+D&ouml;llinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="CONFUCIUS."></a>CONFUCIUS.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>SAGE AND MORALIST.</p>
+
+<p>550-478 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was &quot;a transmitter, and not a maker.&quot; But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confucius&quot; is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.</p>
+
+<p>But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.</p>
+
+<p>To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. &quot;Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.</p>
+
+<p>These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, &quot;I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,&quot;--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, &quot;You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on.&quot; How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.</p>
+
+<p>The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.</p>
+
+<p>In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, &quot;Heaven is destroying me!&quot; His disciples on this said,
+&quot;Sir, your grief is excessive.&quot; &quot;It is excessive,&quot; he replied. &quot;If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, &quot;I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker.&quot; If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.</p>
+
+<p>And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+&quot;superior man is catholic and no partisan.&quot; Duke Gae asked, &quot;What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?&quot; The sage replied,
+&quot;Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit.&quot; Again he said, &quot;It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail.&quot; The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: &quot;A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'&quot; Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: &quot;In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant.&quot; Thus he talks like Solomon.
+&quot;Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'&quot; Of a virtuous prince, he said: &quot;In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: &quot;It is to be heard of through the family and State.&quot; The master
+replied: &quot;That is notoriety, not distinction.&quot; Again he said: &quot;Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?&quot; Again, &quot;If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?&quot; There is great force in this
+saying: &quot;The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease.&quot; A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: &quot;He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland.&quot; And, &quot;The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.&quot; &quot;If a man,&quot; he said,
+&quot;take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand.&quot; And again, &quot;He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment.&quot; These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: &quot;Specious words confound virtue.&quot; &quot;Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans.&quot; &quot;Virtue,&quot; the master
+said, &quot;is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue.&quot; This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. &quot;There are three
+things,&quot; he continued, &quot;which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+&quot;I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself.&quot; His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: &quot;The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration.&quot; Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, &quot;If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?&quot; The master replied: &quot;I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat.&quot; Here something like wit and irony break
+out: &quot;A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: &quot;Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted.&quot; When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: &quot;Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents.&quot; &quot;But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?&quot; asked the duke. &quot;Raise to office those whom you do know,&quot; The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: &quot;A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire.&quot; &quot;The art of
+government,&quot; he said, &quot;is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?&quot; This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: &quot;If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal.&quot; This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: &quot;It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right.&quot; Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: &quot;It is to love all men.&quot; Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: &quot;Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself.&quot; This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+&quot;Cast not your pearls before swine.&quot; There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: &quot;What do you say about the treatment of injuries?&quot; The master
+answered: &quot;Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness.&quot; Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount &quot;When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again.&quot;
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: &quot;The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit.&quot; The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: &quot;Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.</p>
+
+<p>The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the &quot;headstone of the corner&quot;
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The &quot;superior man,&quot; who next to
+the &quot;sage&quot; holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.</p>
+
+<p>In &quot;The Great Learning&quot; Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or <i>knowledge</i>, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. &quot;Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness.&quot;
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for &quot;learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous.&quot;
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.</p>
+
+<p>The next step towards perfection is the <i>cultivation of the
+person</i>,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.</p>
+
+<p>The height of virtue is <i>filial piety</i>; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. &quot;Happy,&quot;
+says he, &quot;is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.</p>
+
+<p>But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. &quot;Friends,&quot; said he, &quot;are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick.&quot; One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. &quot;He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. &quot;No virtue,&quot; said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+&quot;is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men.&quot; When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, &quot;Enrich them;&quot; and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, &quot;Teach them.&quot; On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+&quot;Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you.&quot; Here
+we have the negative side of the positive &quot;golden rule.&quot; Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.</p>
+
+<p>As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. &quot;I am,&quot;
+said he, &quot;not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear.&quot; He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+&quot;Book of Changes&quot; (Yin-King), the &quot;Book of Poetry&quot; (She-King), the &quot;Book
+of History&quot; (Shoo-King), the &quot;Book of Rites&quot; (Le-King), the &quot;Great
+Learning&quot; (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+&quot;Doctrine of the Mean&quot; (Chung-yung), teaching the &quot;golden mean&quot; of
+conduct, and the &quot;Confucian Analects&quot; (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--&quot;The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius.&quot; No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be &quot;ancient&quot; is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.</p>
+
+<p>This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.</p>
+
+<p>Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="ANCIENT_PHILOSOPHY."></a>ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.</p>
+
+<p>Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!</p>
+
+<p>In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. &quot;Know thyself,&quot; is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the <i>beginning of things.</i> &quot;Philosophy,&quot; it has
+been well said, &quot;maybe a history of <i>errors</i>^ but not of <i>follies</i>&quot;. It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the <i>prima materia</i>, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as <i>intelligence</i>, or as a <i>creative</i> power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.</p>
+
+<p>Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that <i>air</i>, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.</p>
+
+<p>Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. &quot;For,&quot; says he, &quot;man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul.&quot; And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as <i>soul</i> it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+<i>intelligence</i>. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: &quot;It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as <i>fire</i>, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. &quot;If Anaximenes,&quot; says Maurice, not very clearly, &quot;discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, <i>himself</i>, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all.&quot; To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. &quot;From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion,&quot; says Archer Butler, &quot;Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas.&quot;
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.</p>
+
+<p>Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the <i>primum mobile</i>,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not <i>matter</i> in its different elements, but
+rather <i>mind</i>, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. &quot;Nothing,&quot; says he, &quot;can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,&quot;--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that <i>The Infinite</i> is the origin of all
+things. He used the word <i>[Greek: archae] (beginning)</i> to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+&quot;elements&quot; could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an <i>induction</i> from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+<i>deduction</i>. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.</p>
+
+<p>This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as &quot;clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of <i>Kosmos</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that <i>number</i> is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. &quot;It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle <i>ex nihilo nihil fit</i> he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+<i>One</i>, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, &quot;for,&quot; said he, &quot;error is spread over all things.&quot; It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? &quot;Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?&quot; What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.</p>
+
+<p>Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of <i>being</i>. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is <i>thought</i>;
+the <i>All</i> is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented <i>Dialectics</i>, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the <i>One</i>, Zeno proved the non-existence of the <i>Many</i>.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.</p>
+
+<p>Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus &quot;God is love&quot; is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might &quot;behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.&quot; Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. &quot;To
+philosophy,&quot; said he, &quot;I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity.&quot;
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. <i>Cui bono?</i> this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.</p>
+
+<p>These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+<i>paid</i> to make the &quot;worse appear the better reason;&quot; yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.</p>
+
+<p>The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called &quot;Sophists,&quot; but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or <i>lovers</i> of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was <i>errors</i> rather than persons, <i>opinions</i> rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a &quot;scolding wife&quot; after the <i>res
+angusta domi</i> had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. &quot;I have heard Pericles,&quot; said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, &quot;and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the <i>idea</i> of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that &quot;the proper study of mankind is man,&quot;--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, &quot;Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth.&quot; He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.</p>
+
+<p>These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. &quot;Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy.&quot; Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated <i>real</i> knowledge from the <i>conceit</i> of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective <i>logical</i>
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective <i>physical</i> researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, &quot;are twofold,--negative and positive. <i>Negative</i>, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. <i>Positive</i>, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of &quot;the good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but <i>his
+contribution</i> to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+&quot;Dialogues&quot; are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.</p>
+
+<p>Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called <i>Ideas</i>;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of <i>ideas</i> as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+<i>numbers</i>. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is <i>love</i>. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is <i>truth</i>; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. &quot;The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy,&quot; says Ritter, &quot;is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected.&quot; To quote from Ritter again:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.</p>
+
+<p>The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--</p>
+
+<p>These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...</p>
+
+<p>Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on &quot;The History of Animals&quot; was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.</p>
+
+<p>With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.</p>
+
+<p>Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a <i>subjective</i> existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone <i>exist</i>; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by <i>sensation</i>. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made <i>reason</i> the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made <i>experience</i> that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. &quot;He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation.&quot; Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the <i>general</i> were better known than the
+<i>particular</i>; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.</p>
+
+<p>Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.</p>
+
+<p>The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+<i>Stoa</i>, &quot;the Porch,&quot; which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. &quot;The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself.&quot; Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of <i>good</i>
+and <i>evil</i>, which is the province of the reason; <i>temperance</i>, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; <i>fortitude</i>, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and <i>justice</i>,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+<i>perfection</i> necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+&quot;success in life;&quot; but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.</p>
+
+<p>Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.</p>
+
+<p>With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until &quot;the
+fulness of time&quot; should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.</p>
+
+<p>The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.</p>
+
+<p>Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.</p>
+
+<p>Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.</p>
+
+<p>The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.</p>
+
+<p>But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.</p>
+
+<p>There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise &quot;De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum,&quot; in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay &quot;De Natura Deorum,&quot; in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.</p>
+
+<p>Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.</p>
+
+<p>If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who <i>lived</i> the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose &quot;Thoughts&quot; are still held in
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?</p>
+
+<p>We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.</p>
+
+<p>The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.</p>
+
+<p>The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. M&uuml;ller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="SOCRATES."></a>SOCRATES.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>470-399 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK PHILOSOPHY.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.</p>
+
+<p>He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+&quot;appearance,&quot; says Grote, &quot;was a moral phenomenon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic <i>gens</i>.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in &quot;good society.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call &quot;a character.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.</p>
+
+<p>His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.</p>
+
+<p>He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. &quot;To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore.&quot; Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the &quot;Menexenus&quot;
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the &quot;Symposium&quot; he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.</p>
+
+<p>To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.</p>
+
+<p>But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.</p>
+
+<p>So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.</p>
+
+<p>Thus arose the celebrated &quot;definitions,&quot;--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what <i>is</i>, and what <i>is not</i>. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.</p>
+
+<p>How far the &quot;definitions&quot; of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his <i>method</i> was
+as what his <i>aim</i> was.</p>
+
+<p>The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, &quot;Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,&quot;--the essence and spirit of all paganism.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and &quot;for physics substituted morals.&quot; He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. &quot;Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe.&quot; It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. &quot;Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends.&quot; He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.</p>
+
+<p>Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The &quot;Thoughts&quot; of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. &quot;This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice.&quot; From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice &quot;which forbade him to
+enter on public life,&quot; or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+&quot;divine grace&quot; of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. &quot;Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, &quot;The evil that I would not, that I do.&quot; Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but <i>he</i> had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an &quot;inspiration,&quot; and others would call &quot;grace.&quot; Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a &quot;fear&quot; of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as &quot;the
+beginning of wisdom,&quot;--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them &quot;gods,&quot; or divinities, and not <i>the</i> &quot;God Almighty&quot; whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.</p>
+
+<p>Think what a man he was: truly was he a &quot;moral phenomenon.&quot; You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+<i>his</i> disciples no such &quot;miserable interrogatory&quot; as &quot;Who shall show us
+any good?&quot; but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--&quot;What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.</p>
+
+<p>So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the &quot;Clouds,&quot; held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism <i>was</i> subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.</p>
+
+<p>Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.</p>
+
+<p>His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the &quot;Memorabilia&quot; of Xenophon and the &quot;Dialogues&quot; of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. &quot;No man has ever been found,&quot; says Grote, &quot;strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity.&quot; His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="PHIDIAS"></a>PHIDIAS</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>500-430 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>GREEK ART.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-&aacute;-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.</p>
+
+<p>It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.</p>
+
+<p>Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Art&quot; is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.</p>
+
+<p>The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.</p>
+
+<p>Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. &quot;Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy,&quot; says Cleghorn, &quot;have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize,&quot; Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. &quot;Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age.&quot; These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.</p>
+
+<p>But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.</p>
+
+<p>After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.</p>
+
+<p>The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. &quot;So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions.&quot; And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the <i>column</i>, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the <i>arch</i> is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?</p>
+
+<p>The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that &quot;the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.</p>
+
+<p>But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, &quot;Life is short, but Art is long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. &quot;Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur.&quot;
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous <i>Hercules</i> and the <i>Torso Belvedere</i> are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the <i>Colossus of Rhodes</i>, the <i>Laoco&ouml;n</i>,
+and the <i>Dying Gladiator</i>. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.</p>
+
+<p>But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The <i>Olympian Jove</i> of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the <i>Moses</i> of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the <i>Venus</i> of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's <i>Greek Slave</i>. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.</p>
+
+<p>I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.</p>
+
+<p>It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.</p>
+
+<p>Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+&quot;fore-shortening,&quot; and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.</p>
+
+<p>With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented <i>chiaroscuro</i> (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called &quot;tone.&quot; He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The <i>Helen</i> of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.</p>
+
+<p>But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--&quot;that
+artless balance of motion and repose,&quot; says Fuseli, &quot;springing from
+character and founded on propriety.&quot; Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.</p>
+
+<p>After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.</p>
+
+<p>We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call &quot;encaustic.&quot; Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.</p>
+
+<p>But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of <i>style</i> in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Sta&euml;l, and Macaulay, in our times.</p>
+
+<p>But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and F&eacute;nelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.</p>
+
+<p>Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>M&uuml;ller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+M&uuml;ller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfan&ccedil;on's Antiquit&eacute; Expliqu&eacute;e en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2><a name="LITERARY_GENIUS:"></a>LITERARY GENIUS:</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on &quot;Ancient Religions.&quot; There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.</p>
+
+<p>How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.</p>
+
+<p>We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.</p>
+
+<p>Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. &quot;At his summons,&quot; says Sir Walter Scott, &quot;the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves.&quot; His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.</p>
+
+<p>The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the &quot;Oedipus at
+Colonus.&quot; Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+&quot;Antigone&quot; was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moli&egrave;re pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.</p>
+
+<p>Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moli&egrave;re. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his &quot;Clouds,&quot; the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.</p>
+
+<p>Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.</p>
+
+<p>Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moli&egrave;re
+has imitated him in his &quot;Avare,&quot; and Shakspeare in his &quot;Comedy of
+Errors.&quot; Lessing pronounces the &quot;Captivi&quot; to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Thyestes&quot; of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his &quot;History of Roman Literature,&quot; says:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.</p>
+
+<p>In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the &quot;Georgics&quot; of Virgil
+and the &quot;Satires&quot; of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--<i>Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax</i>. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.</p>
+
+<p>It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.</p>
+
+<p>In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.</p>
+
+<p>In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem &quot;De Rerum Natura&quot; is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's &quot;Essay on Man&quot; in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucret&icirc;,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Exitio terras quum dabit una dies.&quot;<br>
+
+<p>Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose &quot;Tristia,&quot; a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his &quot;Metamorphoses,&quot; mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His &quot;Tristia&quot; were more
+highly praised than his &quot;Amores&quot; or his &quot;Metamorphoses,&quot; a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.</p>
+
+<p>Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that &quot;the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.</p>
+
+<p>Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.</p>
+
+<p>In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.</p>
+
+<p>I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.</p>
+
+<p>The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as &quot;musical as Apollo's
+lyre.&quot; Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great &quot;Father of History&quot; is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.</p>
+
+<p>To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.</p>
+
+<p>Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+&quot;Anabasis,&quot; in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his &quot;Cyropaedia,&quot; in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his &quot;Memorabilia&quot; of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.</p>
+
+<p>If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.</p>
+
+<p>As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+<i>strong</i> men, and <i>because</i> they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for <i>&eacute;clat</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+&quot;Commentaries&quot; resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.</p>
+
+<p>The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+M&uuml;ller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.</p>
+
+<p>The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. &quot;His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give.&quot;
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.</p>
+
+<p>In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the &quot;Life of Agricola,&quot; his father-in-law; his
+&quot;Annales,&quot; which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the &quot;Historiae,&quot; which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's &quot;Commentaries.&quot;
+We require <i>life</i> in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the &quot;Life of
+Charles XII.&quot; and the &quot;Thirty Years' War&quot; are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the <i>art</i> which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the &quot;Provincial Letters&quot; of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the &quot;Arabian Nights&quot;
+or Froissart's &quot;Chronicles,&quot; are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the &quot;immortals&quot; of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his &quot;Parallel Lives&quot; of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.</p>
+
+<p>But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His &quot;Lives of
+the Caesars,&quot; like Diogenes Laertius's &quot;Lives of the Philosophers,&quot; are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+
+<p>There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of &quot;Olympian&quot; was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.</p>
+
+<p>But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.</p>
+
+<p>As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the &quot;magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers.&quot; His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.</p>
+
+<p>Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that &quot;could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience.&quot; Says Lord Brougham, &quot;It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. &quot;Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.</p>
+
+<p>But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his &quot;Regal Rome,&quot; thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that &quot;he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write.&quot; He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--&quot;De Re Rustica,&quot; written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his &quot;Divine Antiquities,&quot; in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his &quot;City of God.&quot; Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by <i>manner</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.</p>
+
+<p>Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. &quot;Institutiones Oratoriae&quot;
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the &quot;De Oratore&quot; of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.</p>
+
+<p>There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+&quot;Dialogues,&quot; intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moli&egrave;re. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+&quot;Dialogues&quot; of Lucian is the &quot;City of God&quot; by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.</p>
+
+<p>Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.</p>
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br>
+<h2>AUTHORITIES.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="full">
+<br>
+<pre>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume I, by John
+Lord
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume I
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2003  [eBook #10477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME
+I***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of
+
+MARY PORTER LORD,
+
+WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND APPRECIATION
+
+AS A DEVOTED WIFE
+
+ENCOURAGED ME TO A LONG LIFE
+
+OF HISTORICAL LABORS,
+
+This Work
+
+IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
+
+BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
+
+
+In preparing a new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, the "Beacon Lights
+of History," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of
+lectures and volumes. Dr. Lord began with his volume on classic
+"Antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return
+to the remoter times of "Old Pagan Civilizations" (reaching back to
+Assyria and Egypt) and the "Jewish Heroes and Prophets." These issued,
+he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it
+down to modern days.
+
+The "Old Pagan Civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years
+before the Hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the
+first. Then follows the volume on "Jewish Heroes and Prophets," ending
+with St. Paul and the Christian Era. After this volume, which in any
+position, dealing with the unique race of the Jews, must stand by
+itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the Pagan centuries, in
+"Ancient Achievements" and "Imperial Antiquity," the latter coming down
+to the Fall of Rome in the fourth century A.D., which ends the era of
+"Antiquity" and begins the "Middle Ages."
+
+NEW YORK, September 15, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+It has been my object in these Lectures to give the substance of
+accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of
+history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a
+period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a
+volume, I have sought to present what is true rather than what is new.
+
+Although most of these Lectures have been delivered, in some form,
+during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the
+literary institutions of this country, I have carefully revised them
+within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light
+shed on the topics and times of which they treat.
+
+The revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the Bible,
+under the stimulus of recent Oriental travels and investigations, not
+only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of
+most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a
+series of Lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with
+Jewish history.
+
+Of course I have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these Biblical
+studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned
+scholars; but I have sought to interest intelligent Christians by a
+continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible
+knowledge bearing on the main subjects. If I have persisted in adhering
+to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand
+years, I have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on
+important points by the great critics of the progressive schools.
+
+I have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on
+comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which
+have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the
+institutions which have grown out of them, have not, I trust, been
+uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made.
+
+Inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and
+movements which we call Civilization centres in no slight degree in the
+men who were identified with them, I have endeavored to give a faithful
+picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions
+which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or
+men of action.
+
+And that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious
+benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has
+been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been
+their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are
+ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. These services,
+certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which I have
+aspired to show.
+
+JOHN LORD.
+
+
+
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+THE OLD PAGAN CIVILIZATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+Ancient religions
+Christianity not progressive
+Jewish monotheism
+Religion of Egypt
+Its great antiquity
+Its essential features
+Complexity of Egyptian polytheism
+Egyptian deities
+The worship of the sun
+The priestly caste of Egypt
+Power of the priests
+Future rewards and punishments
+Morals of the Egyptians
+Functions of the priests
+Egyptian ritual of worship
+Transmigration of souls
+Animal worship
+Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews
+Assyrian deities
+Phoenician deities
+Worship of the sun
+Oblations and sacrifices
+Idolatry the sequence of polytheism
+Religion of the Persians
+Character of the early Iranians
+Comparative purity of the Persian religion
+Zoroaster
+Magism
+Zend-Avesta
+Dualism
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+Religions of India
+Antiquity of Brahmanism
+Sanskrit literature
+The Aryan races
+Original religion of the Aryans
+Aryan migrations
+The Vedas
+Ancient deities of India
+Laws of Menu
+Hindu pantheism
+Corruption of Brahmanism
+The Brahmanical caste
+Character of the Brahmans
+Rise of Buddhism
+Gautama
+Experiences of Gautama
+Travels of Buddha
+His religious system
+Spread of his doctrine
+Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism
+Nirvana
+Gloominess of Buddhism
+Buddhism as a reform of morals
+Sayings of Siddartha
+His rules
+Failure of Buddhism in India
+Authorities
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion of the Greeks and Romans
+Greek myths
+Greek priests
+Greek divinities
+Greek polytheism
+Greek mythology
+Adoption of Oriental fables
+Greek deities the creation of poets
+Peculiarities of the Greek gods
+The Olympian deities
+The minor deities
+The Greeks indifferent to a future state
+Augustine view of heathen deities
+Artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine
+Temple of Zeus in Olympia
+Greek festivals
+No sacred books among the Greeks
+A religion without deities
+Roman divinities
+Peculiarities of Roman worship
+Ritualism and hypocrisy
+Character of the Roman
+Authorities
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+Early condition of China
+Youth of Confucius
+His public life
+His reforms
+His fame
+His wanderings
+His old age
+His writings
+His philosophy
+His definition of a superior man
+His ethics
+His views of government
+His veneration for antiquity
+His beautiful character
+His encouragement of learning
+His character as statesman
+His exaltation of filial piety
+His exaltation of friendship
+The supremacy of the State
+Necessity of good men in office
+Peaceful policy of Confucius
+Veneration for his writings
+His posthumous influence
+Lao-tse
+Authorities
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+Intellectual superiority of the Greeks
+Early progress of philosophy
+The Greek philosophy
+The Ionian Sophoi
+Thales and his principles
+Anaximenes
+Diogenes of Apollonia
+Heraclitus of Ephesus
+Anaxagoras
+Anaximander
+Pythagoras and his school
+Xenophanes
+Zeno of Elea
+Empedocles and the Eleatics
+Loftiness of the Greek philosopher
+Progress of scepticism
+The Sophists
+Socrates
+His exposure of error
+Socrates as moralist
+The method of Socrates
+His services to philosophy
+His disciples
+Plato
+Ideas of Plato
+Archer Butler on Plato
+Aristotle
+His services
+The syllogism
+The Epicureans
+Sir James Mackintosh on Epicurus
+The Stoics
+Zeno
+Principles of the Stoical philosophy
+Philosophy among the Romans
+Cicero
+Epictetus
+Authorities
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+Mission of Socrates
+Era of his birth; view of his times
+His personal appearance and peculiarities
+His lofty moral character
+His sarcasm and ridicule of opponents
+The Sophists
+Neglect of his family
+His friendship with distinguished people
+His philosophic method
+His questions and definitions
+His contempt of theories
+Imperfection of contemporaneous physical science
+The Ionian philosophers
+Socrates bases truth on consciousness
+Uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day
+Superiority of moral truth
+Happiness, Virtue, Knowledge,--the Socratic trinity
+The "daemon" of Socrates
+His idea of God and Immortality
+Socrates a witness and agent of God
+Socrates compared with Buddha and Marcus Aurelius
+His resemblance to Christ in life and teachings
+Unjust charges of his enemies
+His unpopularity
+His trial and defence
+His audacity
+His condemnation
+The dignity of his last hours
+His easy death
+Tardy repentance of the Athenians; statue by Lysippus
+Posthumous influence
+Authorities
+
+
+PHIDIAS.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+General popular interest in Art
+Principles on which it is based
+Phidias taken merely as a text
+Not much known of his personal history
+His most famous statues; Minerva and Olympian Jove
+His peculiar excellences as a sculptor
+Definitions of the word "Art"
+Its representation of ideas of beauty and grace
+The glory and dignity of art
+The connection of plastic with literary art
+Architecture, the first expression of art
+Peculiarities of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture
+Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces
+General features of Grecian architecture
+The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders
+Simplicity and beauty of their proportions...
+The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of
+  Gothic architecture
+Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture
+Superiority of Greek sculpture
+Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and
+  distinguished men
+The great sculptors of antiquity
+Their ideal excellence
+Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt
+Its gradual development in Greece
+Famous Grecian painters
+Decline of art among the Romans
+Art as seen in literature
+Literature not permanent without art
+Artists as a class
+Art a refining influence rather than a moral power
+Authorities
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS.
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+Richness of Greek classic poetry
+Homer
+Greek lyrical poetry
+Pindar
+Dramatic poetry
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+Greek comedy: Aristophanes
+Roman poetry
+Naevius, Plautus, Terence
+Roman epic poetry: Virgil
+Lyrical poetry: Horace, Catullus
+Didactic poetry: Lucretius
+Elegiac poetry: Ovid, Tibullus
+Satire: Horace, Martial, Juvenal
+Perfection of Greek prose writers
+History: Herodotus
+Thucydides, Xenophon
+Roman historians
+Julius Caesar
+Livy
+Tacitus
+Orators
+Pericles
+Demosthenes
+Aeschines
+Cicero
+Learned men: Varro
+Seneca
+Quintilian
+Lucian
+Authorities
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+Agape, or Love Feast among the Early Christians _Frontispiece_
+_After the painting by J.A. Mazerolle_.
+
+Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis-Osiris
+_After the painting by E.F. Bridgman_.
+
+Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal
+_After the painting by Henri Motte_.
+
+Apollo Belvedere
+_From a photograph of the statue in the Vatican, Rome._
+
+Confucian Temple, Forbidden City, Pekin
+_From a photograph_.
+
+The School of Plato
+_After the painting by O. Knille_.
+
+Socrates Instructing Alcibiades
+_After the painting by H.F. Schopin_.
+
+Socrates
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Pericles and Aspasia in the Studio of Phidias
+_After the painting by Hector Le Roux_.
+
+Zeuxis Choosing Models from among the Beauties of Kroton for his Picture
+  of Helen
+_After the painting by E. Pagliano_.
+
+Homer
+_From the bust in the National Museum, Naples_.
+
+Demosthenes
+_From the statue in the Vatican, Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANCIENT RELIGIONS:
+
+
+EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND PERSIAN.
+
+It is my object in this book on the old Pagan civilizations to present
+the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within
+the limits of these volumes. The practical end which I have in view is
+to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw
+sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the
+comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times.
+
+The first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various
+religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since
+religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions,
+and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and
+life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every
+period of the world. And, necessarily, considering what is the object in
+religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which
+has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, How
+far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of Deity, of the soul,
+and of immortality? How far did they arrive at lofty and immutable
+principles of morality? How far did religion, such as was taught,
+practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to
+just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation,
+or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and
+endless life? And how did the various religions compare with what we
+believe to be the true religion--Christianity--in its pure and ennobling
+truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and
+developing character?
+
+I assume that there is no such thing as a progressive Christianity,
+except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty
+principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on
+the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by Jesus the Christ, but that
+they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. I assume
+also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any
+other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and
+sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain
+that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and
+probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his
+apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion,
+when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. This notion I
+repudiate. I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect,
+true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity;
+and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the
+Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system.
+
+The oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is
+probably the pure monotheism held by the Jews. Some nations have claimed
+a higher antiquity for their religion--like the Egyptians and
+Chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the Hebrews show to have
+been communicated to Abraham, and to earlier men of God treated of in
+those Scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full
+credence. We are in doubt about them. The origin of religions is
+enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. Authentic
+history does not go back far enough to settle this point. The primitive
+religion of mankind I believe to have been revealed to inspired men,
+who, like Shem, walked with God. Adam, in paradise, knew who God was,
+for he heard His voice; and so did Enoch and Noah, and, more clearly
+than all, Abraham. They believed in a personal God, maker of heaven and
+earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and
+without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world
+which he made.
+
+It is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and
+loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the Hebrew patriarchs, as handed
+down to his children by Abraham, over that of all other founders of
+ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe,
+supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock,
+especially in its Christian development, is superior to all others. This
+sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the Hebrew race, in all their
+wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they
+partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in
+contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved.
+
+But it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the Jews in this
+connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and
+since everybody has access to the Bible, the earlier portions of which
+give the true account not only of the Hebrews and their special
+progenitor Abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and
+most intelligent persons are familiar with its details.
+
+I begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with
+which the Jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more
+or less influenced. And whether these religions were, as I think,
+themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man,
+or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out
+of an original worship of the powers of Nature, of ghosts of ancestral
+heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so
+forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this
+background of history in its effects upon modern times, through Judaism
+and Christianity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of
+ancient Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics
+of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and
+their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is
+ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure.
+
+The religion of Egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with
+certainty. We know that it existed before Abraham, and with but few
+changes, for at least two thousand years. Mariette places the era of the
+first Egyptian dynasty under Menes at 5004 B.C. It is supposed that the
+earliest form of the Egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was
+known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. What the
+esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no
+sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the Indian
+Vedas and the Persian Zend-Avesta. Herodotus affirms that he knew the
+mysteries, but he did not reveal them.
+
+But monotheism was lost sight of in Egypt at an earlier period than the
+beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to
+become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The
+reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human
+experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before
+Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into
+a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the
+interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
+
+The Egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of Nature,--the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the
+rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a
+mysterious influence over human destiny. There was doubtless an
+indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe,
+extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could
+be seen or known. To these powers of Nature the Egyptians gave names,
+and made them divinities.
+
+The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. What it
+lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. Wilkinson enumerates
+seventy-three principal divinities, and Birch sixty-three; but there
+were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and
+presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity,
+to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. The more
+complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power
+of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services
+for the offerings and propitiations.
+
+Of these Egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the
+list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great
+cities different deities were worshipped. These were Ammon--the
+concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the Jupiter of
+the Romans), whose sacred city was Thebes. At a later date this god was
+identified with Ammon Ra, the physical sun. Ra was the sun-god,
+especially worshipped at Heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat.
+Kneph was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose
+principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of
+artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of
+beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city
+was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the
+vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These
+deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and
+form,--a process of divine incarnation.
+
+But the most popular deity was Osiris. His image is found standing on
+the oldest monument, a form of Ra, the light of the lower world, and
+king and judge of Hades. His worship was universal throughout Egypt, but
+his chief temples were at Abydos and Philae. He was regarded as mild,
+beneficent, and good. In opposition to him were Set, malignant and evil,
+and Bes, the god of death. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, was a
+sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of Nature. Khons
+was the moon god. Maut, the consort of Ammon, represented Nature. Sati,
+the wife of Kneph, bore a resemblance to Juno. Nut was the goddess of
+the firmament; Ma was the goddess of truth; Horus was the mediator
+between creation and destruction.
+
+But in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the Egyptian worship
+centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most
+powerful and brilliant of the forces of Nature. Among all the ancient
+pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names,
+whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for
+the people. To these temples were erected, statues raised, and
+sacrifices made.
+
+No ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of
+its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they
+were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in
+India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of
+caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in
+proportion to the belief in a future state. Take away the belief in
+future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not
+much religion left. There may be philosophy and morality, but not
+religion, which is based on the fear and love of God, and the destiny of
+the soul after death. Saint Augustine, in his "City of God," his
+greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and
+all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most
+important thing which can occupy the mind of man.
+
+We cannot then utterly despise the religion of Egypt, in spite of the
+absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine
+of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future
+state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the
+body." On this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed
+to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to
+them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath.
+The idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the
+Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their
+conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for
+virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in
+the soul. No ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable
+morality with more force than Confucius, Buddha, and Epictetus. Who in
+any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to
+rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty,
+benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? With the discharge of these
+duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the
+gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept
+into theological dogmas and speculations.
+
+Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
+rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
+were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
+industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
+to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
+for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
+although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
+Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
+Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
+sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
+industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
+agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
+perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
+ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
+temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
+preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
+condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
+emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
+perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
+engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
+the people.
+
+The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
+ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
+numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
+They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
+They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
+wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
+antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
+Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
+found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
+show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were
+married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish
+nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of a priest was generally
+a priest also. There were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not
+more so than in the Roman Catholic Church. The high-priest was a great
+dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. The king himself
+was a priest.
+
+The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
+and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
+"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and so
+imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
+performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
+There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation.
+The land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a
+single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body
+of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history, especially Wilkinson,
+speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of
+their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices,
+processions, and funerals. Their life was so full of minute duties and
+restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as
+well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
+
+One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
+idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
+reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
+was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
+judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
+long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
+souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
+Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
+bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
+difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in
+Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand
+dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of
+kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic
+monuments.
+
+The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship. To
+each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
+Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
+and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
+asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
+Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
+special favorites among the gods.
+
+"The worst form of this animal worship," says Rawlinson, "was the belief
+that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so
+remained until the animal's death. Such were the Apis bulls, of which a
+succession was maintained at Memphis in the temple of Phtha, or,
+according to others, of Osiris. These beasts, maintained at the cost of
+the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective
+cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their
+lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge
+sarcophagi, while all Egypt went into mourning on their decease."
+
+Such was the religion of Egypt as known to the Jews,--a complicated
+polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of
+Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism
+which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to
+antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a
+degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of
+the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled
+by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading
+superstition. How far they taught that the various objects of worship
+were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps
+accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. But the priests
+believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus
+recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and
+made its welfare paramount over all other interests. This recognition
+doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make
+them religious, despite their false and degraded views of God, and their
+disgusting superstitions.
+
+The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being
+influenced by the popular belief. Hence in the wilderness, and in the
+days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the
+golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy
+submission to the rule of priests. In one very important thing, however,
+the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration
+of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that
+made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. It is seemingly
+ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose
+that the Jews did not believe in it. Certainly the most cultivated and
+aristocratic sect--the Sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the
+Pharisees held to it. They, however, were products of a later age, and
+had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in
+their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls
+that escaped from Egypt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which
+more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very
+little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any,
+have not come down to us. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments,
+on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which
+they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and
+priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. From these we learn or
+infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion
+was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a
+system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to
+in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to
+have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers,
+to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the
+oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of
+Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some
+abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the
+earth. Of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some
+in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh. In the very
+earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the
+religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was
+a development as men became wicked and sensual. The knowledge of the one
+God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that
+there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of
+higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as
+Lord of lords.
+
+This deity in Assyria was Asshur. He is recognized by most authorities
+as Asshur, a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, who was probably the hero
+and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the
+Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
+by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
+occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
+Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
+Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
+Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
+after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
+of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
+those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
+Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
+the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
+temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
+thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
+speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
+kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
+"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
+corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
+Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
+and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
+ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
+Assyrian royalty.
+
+These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
+in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
+adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
+the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
+settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
+descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
+children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
+influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was
+also called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine
+being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. The deity of the
+Egyptian pantheon, with whom Baal most nearly corresponds, was Ammon,
+addressed as the supreme God.
+
+Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in
+Phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme God,--we notice among these
+Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea. Anu,
+the primordial chaos; Hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and
+Bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as Rawlinson thinks, "the
+original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding
+in the main with the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune, who divided
+between them the dominion over the visible creation." The god Bel, in
+the pantheon of the Babylonians and Assyrians, is the God of gods, and
+Father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. His title
+expresses dominion.
+
+In succession to the gods of this first trio,--Anu, Bel, and Hea,--was
+another trio, named Siu, Shamas, and Vul, representing the moon, the
+sun, and the atmosphere. "In Assyria and Babylon the moon-god took
+precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the
+inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." Hence, Siu was the
+more popular deity; but Shamas, the sun, as having most direct
+reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the
+day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king
+triumphant over enemies. The worship of this deity was universal, and
+the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. Vul, the
+third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of
+tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the Assyrian legends
+recognize. He corresponds with the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans,--"the
+prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of
+the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the
+atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he
+was beneficent as well as destructive.
+
+All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek
+mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or
+pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the
+impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived
+from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing
+themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion
+of Greece. It is a mooted question whether the Greek civilization is
+chiefly derived from Egypt, or from Assyria and Phoenicia,--probably
+more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of
+the Aryan race east of the Caspian Sea. All these ancient monarchies
+had run out and were old when the Greeks began their settlements and
+conquests.
+
+There was still another and inferior class of deities among the
+Assyrians and Babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed
+to have great influence on human affairs. These deities were the planets
+under different names. The early study of astronomy among the dwellers
+on the plains of Babylon and in Mesopotamia gave an astral feature to
+their religion which was not prominent in Egypt. These astral deities
+were Nin, or Bar (the Saturn of the Romans); and Merodach (Jupiter), the
+august god, "the eldest son of Heaven," the Lord of battles. This was
+the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor
+were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all
+beings," etc. Nergal (Mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the
+great Hero," "the King of battles." He goes before kings in their
+military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem
+is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
+Ista (Venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both
+men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. Nebo (Mercury)
+had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who
+"teaches and instructs."
+
+There were other deities in the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheon whom I
+need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in
+human affairs, like the inferior deities of the Romans, presiding over
+dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like.
+
+The Phoenicians, like the Assyrians, had their goddesses. Astoreth, or
+Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did
+the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with
+Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly
+she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was
+connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of
+Aphrodite, or Venus. Tanith also was a noted female deity, and was
+worshipped at Carthage and Cyprus by the Phoenician settlers. The name
+is associated, according to Gesenius, with the Egyptian goddess Nut, and
+with the Grecian Artemis the huntress.
+
+An important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they
+do not uniformly represent the same power. Thus Baal, the Phoenician
+sun-god, was made by the Greeks and Romans equivalent to Zeus, or
+Jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. Apollo, the sun-god of the
+Greeks, was not so powerful as Zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in
+Assyria and Phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. In Babylonia,
+Shamas was a sun-god as well as Bel; and Bel again was the god of the
+heavens, like Zeus.
+
+While Zeus was the supreme deity in the Greek mythology, rather than
+Apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and
+the most commonly worshipped deity of all the Oriental nations, as being
+the most powerful force in Nature. Behind the sun, however, there was
+supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not
+represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who
+were his votaries, and called the "Father of all the gods," "the Ancient
+of days," reigning supreme over them all. This indefinite conception of
+the Jehovah of the Hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the
+primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of
+the Pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs,
+who were priests as well as kings.
+
+The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of
+antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or
+Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices.
+It was even a peculiarity of the old Jewish religion, as well as that of
+China and India. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered
+to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of
+which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to
+obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object
+dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to
+propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his
+supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of
+wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be
+necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The
+sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and
+precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen
+never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather
+that which was dearest to them. Sometimes, especially in Phoenicia,
+human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity
+of polytheism. But the instincts of humanity generally kept men from
+rites so revolting. Christianity, as one of its distinguishing features,
+abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless.
+The sacrifices pleasing to God are a broken spirit, as revealed to David
+and Isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of Jewish worship, and
+still more to Paul and Peter when the new dispensation was fully
+declared. The only sacrifice which Christ enjoined was self-sacrifice,
+supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme God, and to his
+children: as the Christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering
+evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience
+to his Father's will, that the world might be saved by his own
+self-sacrifice.
+
+With sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if
+we except that of Persia in the time of Zoroaster, there was need of an
+officiating priesthood. The priests in all countries sought to gain
+power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or
+less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. The priestly
+caste became a terrible power in Egypt and India, where the people, it
+would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most
+docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of
+their souls. In China, where there was scarcely any religion at all,
+this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the
+Greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and
+grace rather than a spiritual god. Sacerdotalism entered into
+Christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power,
+and with great force ruled the Christian world in times of ignorance and
+superstition. It is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is
+associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference,
+showing how few worship God in spirit and in truth even in Christian
+countries. Yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so
+surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the
+divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition.
+
+Among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural
+sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at
+first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun,
+moon, and stars, and the elements of Nature, like fire, water, and air.
+But the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance
+set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in India and Africa
+at the present day. This is the lowest form of religion, and the most
+repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the
+enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which
+succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages,
+until the fulness of time arrived when God sent reformers among the
+debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new
+truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being
+utterly lost.
+
+It is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated,
+as known to the Jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated,
+have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine
+truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they
+nourished. Mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their
+place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where
+Mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, Christianity
+in some form has come in and dethroned them forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one form of religion with which the Jews came in contact which
+was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of Persia, the
+loftiest form of all Pagan beliefs.
+
+The Persians were an important branch of the Iranian family. "The
+Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying
+between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and
+the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great
+extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters
+piercingly cold. A great part of this region is an arid and frightful
+desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. In this
+country the Iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 B.C.,
+about the time the Hindus emigrated from Central Asia to the banks of
+the Indus. Both Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or
+Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high
+table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by
+the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian
+Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the
+Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to
+Europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language.
+
+Of those who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,--a
+brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral
+in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and
+gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and
+horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived
+in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but
+they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain
+climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole
+plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of
+elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and
+desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of
+beauty lying in close proximity."
+
+The early Persians are represented as having oval faces, raised
+features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the
+gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. Such a people were extremely
+receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the
+boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but
+swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious
+spells. They dissolved the old material civilization of Cushite and
+Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes,
+devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and
+hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet
+and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine
+and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition,
+loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal
+independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their
+fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving
+counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming
+prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who
+scorned toil." Artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve
+thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march,
+carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and
+stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles
+a day.
+
+There was much that is interesting about the ancient Persians. All the
+old authorities, especially Herodotus, testify to the comparative purity
+of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the
+simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling
+sterility of soil and the elements of Nature, to their love of
+agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above
+all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a
+powerful will. The early Persians chose the bravest and most capable of
+their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. Xenophon
+makes Cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and
+light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations,
+dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all
+hearts by a true nobility of nature. He was a reformer of barbarous
+methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. In
+short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric
+heroes of the Middle Ages.
+
+There was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion
+essentially different from that of Assyria and Egypt, with which is
+associated the name of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra. Who this
+extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to
+determine. Some suppose that he did not live at all. It is most probable
+that he lived in Bactria from 1000 to 1500 B.C.; but all about him is
+involved in hopeless obscurity.
+
+The Zend-Avesta, or the sacred books of the Persians, are mostly hymns,
+prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom Ormazd
+was regarded as supreme. These poems were first made known to European
+scholars by Anquetil du Perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more
+than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of Menu were translated
+by Sir William Jones. What we know about the religion of Persia is
+chiefly derived from the Zend-Avesta. _Zend_ is the interpretation of
+the Avesta. The oldest part of these poems is called the Gathas,
+supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster about the time of Moses.
+
+As all information about Zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, I
+proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to
+the Iranians, according to Dr. Martin Haug, the great authority on
+this subject.
+
+Its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles;
+one good, the other evil. Both principles were real persons, possessed
+of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity
+in perpetual contest. The good power was called Ahura-Mazda, and the
+evil power was called Angro-Mainyus. Ahura-Mazda means the "Much-knowing
+spirit," or the All-wise, the All-bountiful, who stood at the head of
+all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made
+the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man
+and everlasting happiness. Angro-Mainyus means the black or dark
+intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical.
+He had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes
+and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits
+of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of
+evil on mankind. Ahura-Mazda had no control over this Power of evil; all
+he could do was to baffle him.
+
+These two deities who divided the universe between them had each
+subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the
+government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels
+and demons.
+
+Neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early Iranians
+under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and
+Magism, or the worship of the elements of Nature, became general. The
+elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water.
+Personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. But the most
+common form of worship was that of fire, in Mithra, the genius of light,
+early identified with the sun. Hence, practically, the supreme god of
+the Persians was the same that was worshipped in Assyria and Egypt and
+India,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in
+Persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven
+images of him. With the sun was associated a supreme power that presided
+over the universe, benignant and eternal. Fire itself in its pure
+universality was more to the Iranians than any form. "From the sun,"
+says the Avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." To fire,
+the Persian kings addressed their prayers. Fire, or the sun, was in the
+early times a symbol of the supreme Power, rather than the Power itself,
+since the sun was created by Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd). It was to him that
+Zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the Gathas. "I worship,"
+said he, "the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, full of light....
+Teach thou me, Ahura-Mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth,
+whereby the world first arose." Again, from the Khorda-Avesta we read:
+"In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the
+name of Ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom
+alone is derived rule." From these and other passages we infer that the
+religion of the Iranians was monotheistic. And yet the sun also was
+worshipped under the name of Mithra. Says Zoroaster: "I invoke Mithra,
+the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of
+Ormazd." It would seem from this that the sun was identified with the
+Supreme Being. There was no other power than the sun which was
+worshipped. There was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism,
+such as existed in Egypt. The Iranians believed in one supreme, eternal
+God, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme
+power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was
+created by him. This confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent
+being makes the Iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be
+comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of Egypt and Babylon, it
+is much higher and purer. We see in it no degrading rites, no offensive
+sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is
+spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the
+Hebrews. In the Zend-Avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers
+and praises and supplication to a Supreme Being. In the Vedas--the Hindu
+books--the powers of Nature are gods; in the Avesta they are spirits, or
+servants of the Supreme.
+
+"The main difference between the Vedic and Avestan religions is that in
+the latter the Vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is
+superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. Ahura-Mazda
+(Ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces Indra, the lightning-god. In Iran
+there grew up, what India never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose,
+ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather
+than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of
+the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its
+eternal triumph." [1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Samuel Johnson's Religion of Persia.]
+
+The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel
+see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of
+these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gathas. But
+in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and
+interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy. A world of myth
+and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. The old Bactrian tongue
+in which the Avesta was composed became practically a dead language.
+There entered into the Avesta old Chaldaean traditions. It would be
+strange if the pure faith of Zoroaster should not be corrupted after
+Persia had conquered Babylon, and even after its alliance with Media,
+where the Magi had great reputation for knowledge. And yet even with the
+corrupting influence of the superstitions of Babylon, to say nothing of
+Media, the Persian conquerors did not wholly forget the God of their
+fathers in their old Bactrian home. And it is probable that one reason
+why Cyrus and Darius treated the Jews with so much kindness and
+generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the Jewish
+religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered
+Babylonians. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both the Persians
+and Jews worshipped substantially the one God who made the heaven and
+the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the Persian
+religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful
+agent in Nature; and it is considered by many that from the Persians the
+Jews received, during their Captivity, their ideas concerning a personal
+Devil, or Power of Evil, of which no hint appears in the Law or the
+earlier Prophets. It would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism
+which modern scholars see behind the dualism of Persia, as an elemental
+principle of the old religion of Iran, that the Persians were the
+noblest people of Pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality
+known in the ancient world. Virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and
+both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. But when the
+Persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on
+the fall of Babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith
+became obscured. Had it been the will of Providence that the Greeks
+should have contended with the Persians under the leadership of
+Cyrus,--the greatest Oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than
+under Xerxes, then even an Alexander might have been baffled. The great
+mistake of the Persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to
+the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline
+and national heroism. The consequence was a panic, which would not have
+taken place under Cyrus, whenever they met the Greeks in battle. It was
+a panic which dispersed the Persian hosts in the fatal battle of Arbela,
+and made Alexander the master of western Asia. But degenerate as the
+Persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in
+Artaxerxes II. and Chosroes the Romans found, in their declining
+glories, their most formidable enemies.
+
+Though the brightness of the old religion of Zoroaster ceased to shine
+after the Persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of
+the Magi, yet it is the only Oriental religion which entered into
+Christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early
+monasticism to the priests of India. Christianity had a hard battle with
+Gnosticism and Manichaeism,--both of Persian origin,--and did not come
+out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism,
+entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous
+Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated. The splendid mythology of
+the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and
+Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian
+speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian
+antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of
+evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief
+of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and
+the disciples of the Bactrian sage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Egypt and Babylon; History of Babylonia, by A.H. Sayce;
+Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Rawlinson's Herodotus; George Smith's
+History of Babylonia; Lenormant's Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne; Layard's
+Nineveh and Babylon; Journal of Royal Asiatic Society; Heeren's Asiatic
+Nations; Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel; Birch's Egypt from the Earliest
+Times; Brugsch's History of Egypt; Records of the Past; Rawlinson's
+History of Ancient Egypt; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Sayce's Ancient
+Empires of the East; Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; James
+Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P.
+Le Page Renouf; Moffat's Comparative History of Religions; Bunsen's
+Egypt's Place in History; Persia, from the Earliest Period, by W. S. W.
+Vaux; Johnson's Oriental Religions; Haug's Essays; Spiegel's Avesta.
+
+The above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on
+ancient religions is very large.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
+
+
+BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM.
+
+That form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most
+interest is Buddhism. An inquiry into its characteristics is especially
+interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five
+hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to
+embrace the doctrines which were taught by Buddha, although his religion
+has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost
+sight of. The same may be said of the doctrines of Confucius. The
+religions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have utterly passed
+away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of
+historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search
+for a supernatural Ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and
+indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than
+by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual.
+
+Buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the Hindus,
+although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the
+earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work
+and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as
+it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first
+considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the
+object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his
+countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid
+sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially
+subverting ancient religious ideas. He was a moralist and reformer,
+rather than the founder of a religion.
+
+Brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. It was
+flourishing in India at a period before history was written. It was
+coeval with the religion of Egypt in the time of Abraham, and perhaps at
+a still earlier date. But of its earliest form and extent we know
+nothing, except from the sacred poems of the Hindus called the Vedas,
+written in Sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before Christ,--for
+even the date of the earliest of the Vedas is unknown. Fifty years ago
+we could not have understood the ancient religions of India. But Sir
+William Jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense
+erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an
+English judge in India, prepared the way for the study of Sanskrit, the
+literary language of ancient India, by the translation and publication
+of the laws of Menu. He was followed in his labors by the Schlegels of
+Germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. Within fifty years
+this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied
+that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even
+as Egyptologists have revealed something of ancient Egypt by
+interpreting the hieroglyphics; and Chaldaean investigators have found
+stores of knowledge in the Babylonian bricks.
+
+The Sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those
+poems called Vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws
+and religion of the Hindus. It is poetry, not history, which makes this
+revelation, for the Hindus have no history farther back than five or six
+hundred years before Christ. It is from Homer and Hesiod that we get an
+idea of the gods of Greece, not from Herodotus or Xenophon.
+
+From comparative philology, a new science, of which Prof. Max Mueller is
+one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various
+European languages, as well as of the Latin and Greek, are
+substantially the same as those of the Sanskrit spoken by the Hindus
+thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the Hindus
+were a people of like remote origin with the Greeks, the Italic races
+(Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish,
+Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the
+Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and
+as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the
+Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran,
+belonged to the same great Aryan race.
+
+The original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high
+table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian
+Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so
+cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was
+difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and
+privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising.
+
+It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists,
+which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their
+various modifications in different living languages, to see how the
+lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan
+roots. And there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the
+words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a
+language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of
+thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so
+imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy
+and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! By this process, then, we
+learn that the Aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance
+in civilization. They lived in houses which were roofed, which had
+windows and doors. Their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold
+climates. Their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow,
+the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. They used yokes, axes, and
+ploughs. They wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated
+rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. They had
+clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land.
+Their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural
+affections. Polygamy was unknown among them. They had no established
+sacerdotal priesthood. They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially
+fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their
+dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some
+supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others
+again pantheistic.
+
+Most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests,
+who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their
+influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to
+have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,--which is my own
+conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in
+the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the
+sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of
+original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in
+the religious sense of primitive man. In all the ancient nations the
+sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence
+of fertility to the earth. The emblem of the sun was fire, and hence
+fire was deified, especially among the Hindus, under the name of
+Agni,--the Latin _ignis_.
+
+Fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations,
+supposed to be the _animus mundi_. In Egypt, as we have seen, Osiris,
+the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur,
+the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In India we find Mitra,
+and in Persia Mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as
+Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The
+sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the
+highest places in the Pagan pantheon.
+
+It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the
+Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their
+hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of
+Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas
+representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and
+intelligence--God--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and
+sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Mueller's
+"Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God
+is most distinctly recognized:--
+
+"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the
+only Lord of all that is. He established the earth and sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? It is he who giveth life, who
+giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was
+established, and the earth created."
+
+But if the Supreme God whom we adore was recognized by this ancient
+people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of
+his power, so that Rawlinson thinks[2] that when the Aryan race
+separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call
+the Indo-European group of races, there was no conception of a single
+supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but
+Nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the
+Assyrians and Egyptians.
+
+[Footnote 2: Religions of the Ancient World, p. 105.]
+
+As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed
+the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but
+probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern
+India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it
+so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval
+home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible
+soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual
+labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and
+every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills
+and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate
+and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
+inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
+vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
+not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
+of Indian caste.
+
+It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
+Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
+usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
+These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
+Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
+Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
+various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
+the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
+and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
+and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
+of personality.
+
+In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
+thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
+and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
+worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
+praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
+sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
+praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
+addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
+worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
+happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
+rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
+peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
+were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
+Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
+nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
+although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
+who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
+goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
+the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
+Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures
+reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me
+immortal."
+
+[Footnote 3: Rawlinson, p. 121.]
+[Footnote 4: Wilson: Rig-Veda, vol. iii. p. 170.]
+[Footnote 5: Mueller: Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 46.]
+
+In the oldest Vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness,
+without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed
+so prominent a part of the religion of India at a later period.
+
+Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the
+Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were
+living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become
+national. The supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of Nature,
+like Mitra or Indra, but according to Menu he is Brahm, or Brahma,--"an
+eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who,
+having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance,
+created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became
+an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when
+he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed
+the heaven above, and the earth beneath. From the supreme soul Brahma
+drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the
+senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness,
+the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great
+principle of the soul.... The soul is, in its substance, from Brahma
+himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. The soul,
+then, is simply an emanation from Brahma; but it will not return unto
+him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it
+is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires."
+
+This is the substance of the Hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of
+Menu. It accepts God, but without personality or interference with the
+world's affairs,--not a God to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a
+mere abstraction of the mind.
+
+The theology which is thus taught in the Brahmanical Vedas, it would
+seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the
+part of the Indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets.
+
+In the laws of Menu, intended to exalt the Brahmanical caste, we read,
+as translated by Sir William Jones:--
+
+"To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality,
+nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever
+procure felicity.... Let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion;
+let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a
+donation, let him never proclaim it.... By falsehood the sacrifice
+becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... Single is each
+man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and
+single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... By forgiveness of injuries
+the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their
+duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout
+austerity, those who best know the Vedas.... Bodies are cleansed by
+water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and
+devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... A faithful wife who
+wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing
+unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is
+deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till
+death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every
+sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of
+virtue.... The soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its
+own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness
+of man, ... O friend to virtue, the Supreme Spirit, which is the same
+as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing
+inspector of thy goodness or wickedness."
+
+Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand
+years before Christ. But with these views there is an exaltation of the
+Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the
+recognition of divine qualities. "From his high birth," says Menu, "a
+Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." Hence, great
+things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his
+clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he
+is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is
+to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life
+of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. A
+Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into
+the divine essence. This was the early creed of the Brahman before
+corruption set in. And in these things we see a striking resemblance to
+the doctrines of Buddha. Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism,
+there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were
+those of early Brahmanism.
+
+But Brahmanism became corrupted. Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous
+care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome
+ritualism. The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and
+oppressive. With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the
+laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people,
+who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome
+and minute ceremonies of worship. Caste destroyed all ideas of human
+brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.
+Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors
+of the people. As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the
+priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than
+Druidical.
+
+But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty
+life. Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and
+immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments,
+though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to
+another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the
+religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save
+the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a
+higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme
+intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an
+incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit,
+pervading the universe. The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than
+the godless materialism of the Chinese. It aspired to rise to a
+knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of
+mortal man. It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common
+to all the ancient religions except the Persian.
+
+     "He who through knowledge or religious acts
+     Henceforth attains to immortality,
+     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee."
+
+Whether human sacrifices were offered in India when the Vedas were
+composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. The oldest
+form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. Dr. H. C.
+Trumbull, in his work on "The Blood Covenant," thinks that the origin of
+animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood
+(the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the
+deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode
+of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. This
+presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common
+one. Yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the
+devoted life-offerings to the Divine Friend, came propitiatory rites to
+appease divine anger or gain divine favor. Then came in the natural
+human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of
+sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste.
+
+Again, the Brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual
+desires, like the monks of Syria and Upper Egypt, were meditative and
+intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in
+their system of religion and philosophy. Constant and profound
+meditation on the soul, on God, and on immortality was not without its
+natural results. They explored the world of metaphysical speculation.
+There is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or
+modern times, which may not be found in the Brahmanical writings. "We
+find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism,
+Pyrrhonism, idealism. They anticipated Plato, Kant, and Hegel. They
+could boast of their Spinozas and their Humes long before Alexander
+dreamed of crossing the Indus. From them the Pythagoreans borrowed a
+great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of
+transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food.
+From them Aristotle learned the syllogism.... In India the human mind
+exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its
+operation, before the philosophers of Greece were beginning to enter the
+precincts of metaphysical inquiry." This intellectual subtlety, acumen,
+and logical power the Brahmans never lost. To-day the Christian
+missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical
+tournaments, whenever the Brahman condescends to put forth his powers of
+reasoning.
+
+Brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to
+sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave
+the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which
+according to Indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. Desire,
+anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge.
+
+But I will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which Brahmanical
+philosophers substituted for the Nature-worship taught in the earlier
+Vedas. This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the
+true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion
+to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever
+been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and
+sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually
+piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as
+well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier Vedas.
+
+In the sixth century before Christ, the corruption of society had become
+so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a
+reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an
+impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered
+aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable
+barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people
+themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas,
+had died away. A funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest
+people of all were the Brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated
+ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and
+a repulsive theology. The worship of Nature had degenerated into the
+worship of impure divinities. The priests were inflated with a puerile
+but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty
+which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
+
+Under these circumstances Buddhism arose as a protest against
+Brahmanism. But it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it
+was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary
+life by a reform of morals. It was effected by a prince who goes by the
+name of Buddha,--the "Enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later
+followers to be an incarnation of Deity, miraculously conceived, and
+sent into the world to save men. He was nearly contemporary with
+Confucius, although the Buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into
+China until about two hundred years before the Christian era. He is
+supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called Sakyas, of great
+reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered
+northern India and made a permanent settlement several hundred years
+before. The name by which the reformer is generally known is Gautama,
+borrowed by the Sakyas after their settlement in India from one of the
+ancient Vedic bard-families. The foundation of our knowledge of Sakya
+Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our
+era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed
+after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north
+of India.
+
+The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten
+thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage,
+by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,--a woman of great purity
+of mind. The child was called Siddartha, or "the perfection of all
+things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to
+conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and
+misery of the world. He was therefore carefully educated within the
+walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed
+even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery
+and sorrow. A beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of
+dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness.
+
+At length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and
+know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was
+confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the
+palace. His father took care to remove everything in his way which could
+suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of
+an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life,
+weak and oppressed. This was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of
+his charioteer what kind of a man it was. Forced to reply, the
+charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young,
+sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment.
+
+On hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned
+to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot
+of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy
+is, the time will come, in the course of Nature, when this boy will be
+wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. He became so miserable and dejected on
+this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other
+excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear
+before him in the form of some disease or misery. At last he saw a dead
+man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he
+had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. The same
+painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the
+hard labors and privations of poor people. The more he saw of life as it
+was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on
+every side. He became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in
+the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. While meditating on
+this sad reality beneath a flowering Jambu tree, where he was seated in
+the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious
+ascetic, came to him and said, "I am a Shaman. Depressed and sad at the
+thought of age, disease, and death, I have left my home to seek some way
+of rescue; yet everywhere I find these evils,--all things hasten to
+decay. Therefore I seek that happiness which is only to be found in that
+which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal
+mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the
+happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation,
+all thought about the world destroyed."
+
+This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape
+from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in
+some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually
+acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts
+are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal
+and transient.
+
+The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview
+with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit,
+and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw
+around him on every hand. So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from
+his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments;
+dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of
+Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. Finding a patient
+trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and
+repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years
+practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. This was the
+form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the
+guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddartha as yet is not the
+"enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which
+will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of
+disease and death.
+
+Siddartha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of
+saving truth. His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near
+unto death. The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that
+to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than
+that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of
+the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong. He discovers that no amount of
+austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.
+In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which
+is the turning-point of his history. He resolves to quit his
+self-inflicted torments as of no avail. He meets a shepherd's daughter,
+who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable
+condition. The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his
+strength. He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial
+to his changed views and condition.
+
+Siddartha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. Under the
+shade of the Bodhi tree he devotes himself again to religious
+contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. He remains a while in
+peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely
+flowers seem to pay tribute to him. He passes through successive stages
+of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of
+his previous births in different forms; of the causes of
+re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of
+the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living,
+not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. He is emancipated
+from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of
+religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.
+
+Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the
+way even Brahmans themselves. He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.
+He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and
+extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. While
+he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also
+teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a
+middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use,
+but not abuse, of the good things of earth. In his first sermon he
+declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to
+get rid of self. The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of
+mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live
+in the realm of devout contemplation.
+
+The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels
+from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames
+rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and
+poor. He even allows women to enter it. He thus matures his system,
+which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race,
+and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential
+followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.
+
+Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an
+exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld
+on every side. He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow
+would be forgotten. He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age,
+disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and
+thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the
+practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and
+regulations.
+
+It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from India to China,
+from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
+pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
+eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
+converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
+were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
+their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
+regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
+year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
+return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
+and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
+reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
+China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
+thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
+professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
+Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
+
+Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
+attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
+
+Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its
+most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the
+reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as
+repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with
+ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests,
+when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose
+in their artistic beauty.
+
+From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did
+not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same
+belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of God
+and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine
+essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of
+faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of
+the unity and personality and providence of God. The prayer of the
+Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final
+rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were
+utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer,
+devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be
+purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass
+through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without
+conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and
+disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the
+long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the
+extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
+
+Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal
+God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
+charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and
+must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in
+Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor
+death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of
+existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist
+catechism Nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a
+perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total
+obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." This
+theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and
+unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to
+the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
+They make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its
+emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires
+cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical
+"body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive
+enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually
+conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of
+body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism,"
+"a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further
+modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences
+[during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic."
+
+Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy
+religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a
+life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to
+be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease,
+misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be
+virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives
+one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided
+intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss. It would
+thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not
+an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and
+intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain
+no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and
+power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What
+a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the
+worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or
+anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor
+conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy
+companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
+misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! What is Nirvana but
+an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there
+are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or
+fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no
+life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically
+extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a
+dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final
+achievement of exalted virtue!
+
+But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true
+knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and
+remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality,
+all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there
+were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
+consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all
+ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity,
+purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind
+arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and
+immortality has failed. The idea of God may be lost, but not that of
+moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense
+of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true
+admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
+No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
+Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false
+witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are
+laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
+Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
+
+Hence the prince Siddartha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward
+motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests,
+and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of
+no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of
+deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and
+truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he
+disowned the gods of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the
+security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his
+attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was
+emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a
+reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to
+tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical
+speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city
+and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than
+theological philosophies. He did not know that God is love, but he did
+know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
+
+"Let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us;
+free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men;
+it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the
+longing to save not himself alone, but all others." He compares himself
+to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a
+physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the sexes as
+well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
+emancipation of slaves. "As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over
+her child, so among all beings," said Gautama, "let boundless good-will
+prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the
+false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of
+another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows,
+as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives
+seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The
+true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth
+and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who
+conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think
+lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a
+man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising
+anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver;
+others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will
+return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes
+from him, the more good shall go from me."
+
+These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from
+extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of
+these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the
+precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to
+Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and
+virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its
+essence, theologically, is "Quietism," without firm belief in anything
+reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it
+inculcates ennobling, active duties.
+
+Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep
+the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and
+cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation;
+to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any
+living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy
+hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and
+forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
+His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life,
+truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of
+animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does
+not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered;
+but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
+fatherhood of God." He insisted on the natural equality of all
+men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans,
+and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He
+protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor
+did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only
+the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was
+not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that
+punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law
+of cause and effect.
+
+Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a
+pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most
+offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the
+Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of
+the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best
+ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and
+metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker,
+stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his
+theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of
+humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the
+greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of
+existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin
+misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no
+religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points,
+practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized
+idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the
+multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us
+of monastic institutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist
+priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living
+from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
+Buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced
+drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent
+itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous
+images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did
+not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
+
+"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
+without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
+happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
+without a redeemer, and worship without rites." The failure of Buddhism,
+both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great
+historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason
+enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and
+practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most
+gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world,
+despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his
+attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a
+way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but
+lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal
+divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its
+votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the
+necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral
+ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing
+superstitions of India and the godless materialism of China be replaced
+with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece
+and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles
+and martyrs.
+
+It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as
+it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in Japan, in Burmah, in
+Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of
+its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great
+system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of
+the lower classes. Though a proselyting religion it was never a
+persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for
+its toleration.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max
+Mueller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
+in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sakoontala;
+I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Veda; Sir William
+Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
+Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
+Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
+Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
+derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
+but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
+
+
+
+
+RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
+
+
+CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
+from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
+their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
+of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
+were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
+passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
+eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
+differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
+miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
+gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
+It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
+themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
+but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
+in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
+communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
+
+The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
+the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
+Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
+Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
+planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
+Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
+functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
+They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
+held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
+among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
+class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
+claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
+were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
+themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
+cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
+act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
+prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
+beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
+creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
+They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
+feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
+Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
+apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
+evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
+they accepted.
+
+These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
+intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
+legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
+speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
+and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
+religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
+Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
+worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
+musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
+imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
+the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
+sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
+adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
+at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
+grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
+presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
+stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
+awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
+were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
+gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
+artists of marvellous excellence.
+
+This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
+degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
+forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
+revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
+aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
+or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
+except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
+characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
+secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
+even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
+of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
+the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
+an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
+absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
+and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
+Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
+will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
+have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
+enmities of his divine associates.
+
+Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
+antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
+Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
+original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
+he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
+Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
+have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
+Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
+like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
+were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
+the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
+which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
+Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
+their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
+originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
+the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
+Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
+Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
+celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
+copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
+has a similar source."
+
+Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology
+there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the
+Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical
+and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the Persians, the
+Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt. In all the ancient religions
+the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular
+religion. Belief in supreme deity underlies all the Eastern theogonies,
+which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. There is
+great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of
+myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history,
+or began as human history and were poetized into fable. My belief is
+that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. Fables
+were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people,
+who have ever delighted in the marvellous. As the magnificent, the
+vast, the sublime, which was seen in Nature, impressed itself on the
+imagination of the Orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in
+process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent;
+and what were symbols among Eastern nations became impersonations in the
+poetry of Greece. Grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated
+forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the
+personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of
+Nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and
+mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling
+out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. They are all creations of
+the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of
+the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the
+Hindus and Egyptians were. It was the natural and not the supernatural
+that filled their souls. It was art they worshipped, and not the God who
+created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures
+obedience and faith.
+
+In regard to the gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon, we observe
+that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities
+of men. They are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the
+people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of
+God; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by
+those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the
+qualities revealed. The ancient Romans, themselves stern, earnest,
+practical, had an almost Oriental reverence for their gods, so that
+their Jupiter (Father of Heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing,
+severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the Jehovah of
+the Hebrews was by that nation. When in later times the conquest of
+Eastern countries and of Macedon and Greece brought in luxury, works of
+art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating
+influences of aestheticism, the Romans became corrupted, and gradually
+began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but
+unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of
+the Greek mythology.
+
+The Greek Zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who
+reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the
+skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite
+deity of the Aryan race, the Indra of the Hindus, the Jupiter of the
+Romans,--was in his Grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless
+husband, and sometimes an unkind father. His character was a combination
+of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or
+even to be reverenced. He was the impersonation of power and dignity,
+represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had
+hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the
+earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all.
+
+Poseidon (Roman Neptune), the brother of Zeus, was represented as the
+god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime States. His
+morality was no higher than that of Zeus; moreover, he was rough,
+boisterous, and vindictive. He was hostile to Troy, and yet
+persecuted Ulysses.
+
+Apollo, the next great personage of the Olympian divinities, was more
+respectable morally than his father. He was the sun-god of the Greeks,
+and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of
+musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the
+poets. He had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by
+unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. He was obedient to the will
+of Zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. Temples were erected
+to this favorite deity in every part of Greece, and he was supposed to
+deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at Delphos.
+
+Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the
+Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and
+lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of
+heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy
+blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love.
+
+Ares (Roman Mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless,
+and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving
+orders from Apollo and Athene.
+
+Hermes (Roman Mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and
+of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the Olympian man of
+business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. He was also
+the god of eloquence.
+
+Besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the
+most important of whom was Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, and hence
+the Queen of Heaven. She exercised her husband's prerogatives, and
+thundered and shook Olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous,
+unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. The Greek
+poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence
+represent this deity without those elements of character which we most
+admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. She
+scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints
+before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to
+be reconciled with our notions of dignity. The Roman Juno, before the
+identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the
+queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also
+the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and
+its expenses. She was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women
+were forbidden to touch her altars.
+
+Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character
+without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated
+with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few
+attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses.
+
+Artemis (Roman Diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her
+brother Apollo." She presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which
+the Greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest
+in anything intellectual.
+
+Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and
+erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere
+physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral
+point of view, and mentally contemptible. This goddess was represented
+as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet
+revolting, admired and yet corrupting. She was not of much importance
+among the Romans,--who were far from being sentimental or
+passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their Trojan origin.
+Then, as mother of Aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and
+the Greek poets furnished her character.
+
+Hestia (Roman Vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of
+the Greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. Her personality was
+vague, but she represented the purity which among both Greeks and Romans
+is attached to home and domestic life.
+
+Demeter (Roman Ceres) represented Mother Earth, and thus was closely
+associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and
+bread-making. As agriculture is the primitive and most important of all
+human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving,
+and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
+represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
+(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
+vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
+wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.
+
+Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
+Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
+of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
+unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
+subordinating herself to her children.
+
+Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
+infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
+pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
+her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
+future state.
+
+The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
+with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
+mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
+animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
+with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
+attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
+and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
+night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
+wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
+of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,
+everything they felt. All these wonders and sentiments they
+impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the
+things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. If a
+man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to Zeus; if he wished
+to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked Hermes; if he wished to be
+successful in war, he prayed to Ares.
+
+He never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special
+manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was
+essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. The divinities
+whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits
+which they represented. Thus, Aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious
+dances, and Dionysus with drunken revels. Each deity represented the
+Grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or
+wisdom or madness or folly. The character of Hera was what the poets
+supposed should be the attributes of the Queen of heaven; that of Leto,
+what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of Hestia, what
+should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of Demeter, what should
+show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of Athene, what would
+naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of Aphrodite, what would
+be expected from a sensual beauty. In the main, Zeus was serene,
+majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was
+occasionally faithless to his wife; Poseidon was boisterous, as became
+the monarch of the seas; Apollo was a devoted son and a bright
+companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet,
+beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; Hephaestus, the god of
+fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor
+leads; Ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be;
+Hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and
+tricky; and Dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become
+noisy and rollicking in his intoxication.
+
+Thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these
+are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or
+the duties and business in which they engage. Drunkenness is not
+associated with Zeus, or unchastity with Hera or Athene. The poets make
+each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he
+represents. Hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and
+interesting. Who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has
+learned to scan the lines of Homer or of Virgil? As varied and romantic
+as the "Arabian Nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. In the
+Grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the
+understanding, because these creations are in harmony with Nature, are
+consistent with humanity. There is no hatred and no love, no jealousy
+and no fear, which has not a natural cause. The poets proved themselves
+to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their
+divinities. They did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or
+point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking,
+good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the
+present and for themselves alone.
+
+As a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the
+minds of the Greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring
+future salvation. The welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where
+there was no settled belief in immortality. The gods themselves were fed
+on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals.
+They might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were
+impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal
+life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even
+happiness in its highest sense.
+
+On this fact Saint Augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological
+system. In his most celebrated work, "The City of God," he holds up to
+derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes
+them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to
+save the soul. In his view the grand and distinguishing feature of
+Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, is the gift of eternal life and
+happiness. It is not the morality which Christ and his Apostles taught,
+which gave to Christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other
+religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. And it was
+this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old
+Pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty.
+It was this promise which filled the converts to Christianity with joy,
+enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that
+salvation was the gift of God through the self-sacrifice of Christ.
+Immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable
+people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were
+passed was the source of immeasurable joy. No sooner was this sublime
+expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than
+they threw their idols to the moles and the bats.
+
+But even in regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no
+examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as
+severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows
+the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their
+delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the
+people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities
+as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so
+that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with
+impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples
+the same things. No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in
+contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but
+did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty
+sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed
+in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but
+yield to what was better.
+
+If we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of
+the Greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made
+by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion
+was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the
+poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and
+thus riveted the chains which the poets forged.
+
+The temple of Zeus at Olympia in Elis, where the intellect and the
+culture of Greece assembled every four years to witness the games
+instituted in honor of the Father of the gods, was itself calculated to
+impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. The
+image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems
+by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed
+spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any
+poetical descriptions could do. If it was art which the Greeks
+worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies,
+and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them
+represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to
+the King of Heaven! Seated on his throne, with the emblems of
+sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head,
+neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive
+of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with
+strength,--the image of the Olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his
+worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as
+well as power. No fear was blended with admiration, since his favor
+could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were
+instituted in his honor.
+
+Clarke alludes to the sculptured Apollo Belvedere as giving a still more
+elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure
+expressive of the highest thoughts of the Hellenic mind,--and quotes
+Milman in support of his admiration:--
+
+     "All, all divine! no struggling muscle glows,
+     Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows;
+     But, animate with deity alone,
+     In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."
+
+If a Christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should
+we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan Greeks? The same could be
+said of the statues of Artemis, of Pallas-Athene, of Aphrodite, and
+other "divine" productions of Grecian artists, since they represented
+the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and
+majesty, which the Greeks adored. Hence, though the statues of the gods
+are in human shape, it was not men that the Greeks worshipped, but those
+qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated
+intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. No one can object to
+this boundless admiration which the Greeks had for art in its highest
+forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. It was the divorce
+of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the
+Christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so
+far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which
+were simply creations of poets and artists.
+
+It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
+kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
+provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
+availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
+of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
+in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
+of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
+the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
+They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
+of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
+assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
+could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
+worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
+pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
+sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
+of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
+representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
+processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
+amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
+that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
+philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
+paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
+principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
+their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
+religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
+ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.
+
+Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
+Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious
+truths. The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and
+ceremonies. It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of
+religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.
+Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. From
+what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents,
+of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? It is
+difficult to tell. The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of
+grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the
+same things. Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded
+vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. It was the rule to
+be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the
+severity of art. The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance,
+quackery, and lies. Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of
+the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many
+manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. A
+hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment
+on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the Rocky
+Mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their
+fellow-laborers. Self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws
+which secured the welfare of society. The natural sacredness of home
+guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice
+raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. Men and women
+cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain
+conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and
+barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities.
+
+The graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future
+rewards and punishments. The ultimate law of self-preservation will
+protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead
+to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. A
+traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community
+as in a Christian city. The "heathen Chinee" fears the officers of the
+law as much as does a citizen of London.
+
+The great difference between a Pagan and a Christian people is in the
+power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a
+spiritual Deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which
+have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and
+the development of higher types of social organization. But whatever
+laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of
+violence, of crimes against person and the State and the general
+material welfare of society, are found in Pagan as well as in Christian
+States; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love,
+friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by
+Christianity, are also an inalienable part of the God-given heritage of
+all mankind. We see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many
+domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan Greece, even if
+these were not taught by priests or sages. Every man instinctively
+clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children;
+and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of
+these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake
+of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in
+God. Religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the
+temporal interests of men. Governments and laws take these under their
+protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. They are made
+from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from
+the necessities of civilization. Religion, from the Christian
+standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come,
+to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not
+punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no
+worldly reward.
+
+This kind of religion was not taught by Grecian priests or poets or
+artists, and did not exist in Greece, with all its refinements and
+glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who
+meditated on the secrets of Nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and
+the duties which reason and reflection reveal. And it may be noticed
+that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the
+origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the
+mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and
+injunctions. We see this illustrated in Socrates and Zeno. They seemed
+to despair of finding out God, of explaining the wonders of his
+universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like
+Solomon himself when he said, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for
+this is the whole duty of man." In ethical teachings and inquiries some
+of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which
+Christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the
+virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new
+revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on
+earth is concerned. But these Pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond
+the grave. They even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal.
+They did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of
+thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing
+in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in
+saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary
+men to those glorious heights reached by the Christian converts.
+
+That was the point to which Augustine directed his vast genius and his
+unrivalled logic. He admitted that arts might civilize, and that the
+elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people,
+and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he
+showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise
+eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which
+human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty
+communion with the Deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and
+therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be
+classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people,
+and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. Nor did
+he, in his matchless argument against the gods of Greece and Rome, take
+for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and
+senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty
+forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and
+philosophers like Seneca and Plato. And thus he reached the intelligence
+of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity.
+
+It would be instructive to show that the religion of Greece, as embraced
+by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that
+are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. It did not
+discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it
+did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it
+ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the
+Sermon on the Mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war,
+or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues
+of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show
+that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure
+and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid
+with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a
+worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable
+way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a
+religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable
+deities was without God in the world,--which was no religion at all, but
+a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as Paul argued before the
+assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of
+the world.
+
+And yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of Greece a sense of
+dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both
+in the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the boldest heroes. They seem to be
+reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. In
+the best ages of Greece the worship of the various deities was sincere
+and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or
+avert their displeasure.
+
+It does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests.
+Warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and poured out libations to the gods. Homer's heroes were very
+strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced
+their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was
+a great offence to the deities, from Zeus down to inferior gods. We
+read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. There was
+universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. If the
+gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed,
+temporal and worldly good. People prayed for the same blessings that the
+ancient Jews sought from Jehovah. In this sense the early Greeks were
+religious. Irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. The people,
+however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but
+for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. We seldom
+see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the Iliad, but great
+solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The religion of the Romans differed in some respects from that of the
+Greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. It was more of
+a ritual and a ceremony. It included most of the deities of the Greek
+Pantheon, but was more comprehensive. It accepted the gods of all the
+nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the Pantheon,--even
+Mithra, the Persian sun-god, and the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians,
+to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. It
+was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths
+concerning the loves and quarrels of the Grecian deities. It was more
+practical and less poetical. Every Roman god had something to do, some
+useful office to perform. Several divinities presided over the birth and
+nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good,
+for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. There was an
+elaborate "division of labor" among them. A divinity presided over
+bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household
+transaction had its presiding deities.
+
+There were more superstitious rites practised by the Romans than by the
+Greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or
+bad omens. Great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination.
+The Roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more
+defined and general worship of ancestors than among the Greeks. These
+were the _Penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the
+home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to
+whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. These included a _Lar_, or
+ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to
+guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to
+regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were
+complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called
+Pontifex Maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of
+the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of
+Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices to
+discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight
+of birds.
+
+The festivals were more numerous in Rome than in Greece, and perhaps
+were more piously observed. About one day in four was set apart for the
+worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and
+sacrifices. The principal feast days were in honor of Janus, the great
+god of the Sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of
+January, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of
+the Penates, of Mars, of Vesta, of Minerva, of Venus, of Ceres, of Juno,
+of Jupiter, and of Saturn. The Saturnalia, December 19, in honor of
+Saturn, the annual Thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept
+open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the
+festivals. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, when offerings were
+made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. The feast of Cybele,
+analogous to that of Ceres in Greece and Isis in Egypt, lasted six days.
+These various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were
+managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities.
+
+The principal Roman divinities were the Olympic gods under Latin names,
+like Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, Apollo, Venus, Ceres,
+and Diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. Some of
+the deities were of Etruscan, some of Sabine, and some of Latin origin;
+but most of them were imported from Greece or corresponded with those of
+the Greek mythology. Many were manufactured by the pontiffs for
+utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like Hope, Fear,
+Concord, Justice, Clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. The
+powers of Nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and
+stars. The best side of Roman life was represented in the worship of
+Vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated
+with the Lares and Penates. Of these household gods the head of the
+family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices.
+The Vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the
+Pontifex Maximus.
+
+Thus the Romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are
+to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the Athenians by
+the Apostle Paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods
+were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most
+systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid
+down by the pontiffs. They were grave and decorous in their devotions,
+and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of
+the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and
+ceremony. As faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were
+multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety.
+Superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. Worship in the temples was
+most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most
+ridiculed in the theatres; and as the State was rigorous in its
+religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent
+and influential citizens. What sincerity was there in Julius Caesar when
+he discharged the duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was
+impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in
+Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he
+said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher
+classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of
+Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had
+been the curse of the human race.
+
+If the Romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic
+services than the Greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also
+more hypocritical. If they were not professed freethinkers,--for the
+State did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it
+instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on
+their lives. The Romans were more immoral yet more observant of
+religious ceremonies than the Greeks, who acted and thought as they
+pleased. Intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of
+the Roman citizen. He professed to think as the State prescribed, for
+the masters of the world were the slaves of the State in religion as in
+war. The Romans were more gross in their vices as they were more
+pharisaical in their profession than the Greeks, whom they conquered and
+imitated. Neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies
+and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities,
+softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for
+war and bloody sports. Their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by
+the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. Their slavery was more
+cruel than among any nation of antiquity. Butchery and legalized murder
+were the delight of Romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman
+sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of
+religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased;
+when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home
+was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the
+mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as
+wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from
+marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the
+spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal
+pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and
+violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law
+dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling
+influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in
+them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring
+as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan
+traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary,
+indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God
+for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the
+Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
+wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife,
+deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent,
+haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
+without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections,
+unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the
+Roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the
+hideous reality.
+
+If this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and
+art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the
+pure spirituality of Jesus the Christ, shining into that blackness of
+darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of
+the world"!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World; Grote's History of Greece;
+Thirlwall's History of Greece; Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; Max Mueller's
+Chips from a German Workshop; Curtius's History of Greece; Mr.
+Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age; Rawlinson's Herodotus;
+Doellinger's Jew and Gentile; Fenton's Lectures on Ancient and Modern
+Greece; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology; Clarke's Ten
+Great Religions; Dwight's Mythology; Saint Augustine's City of God.
+
+
+
+
+CONFUCIUS.
+
+
+SAGE AND MORALIST.
+
+550-478 B.C.
+
+About one hundred years after the great religious movement in India
+under Buddha, a man was born in China who inaugurated a somewhat similar
+movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three
+hundred millions of people. It cannot be said that he was the founder of
+a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. To quote
+his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." But he was,
+nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be
+measured by results, I know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so
+permanent. In genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in
+influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world.
+
+"Confucius" is a Latin name given him by Jesuit missionaries in China;
+his real name was K'ung-foo-tseu. He was born about 550 B.C., in the
+province of Loo, and was the contemporary of Belshazzar, of Cyrus, of
+Croesus, and of Pisistratus. It is claimed that Confucius was a
+descendant of one of the early emperors of China, of the Chow dynasty,
+1121 B.C.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the State of
+Loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather
+having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of Loo,
+which State resembled a feudal province of France in the Middle Ages,
+acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the Emperor.
+
+We know but little of the early condition of China. The earliest record
+of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 B.C.,
+when Yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting
+under his sway the different States of China, which had even then
+reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical
+history of the country dates back about five thousand years. Yaou's son
+Shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived
+only to advance the happiness of his subjects. At that period the
+religion of China was probably monotheistic. The supreme being was
+called Shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a
+superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in,
+and a worship of the powers of Nature and of the spirits of departed
+ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants,
+became the prevailing religion. During the reigns of these good emperors
+the standard of morality was high throughout the empire.
+
+But morals declined,--the old story in all the States of the ancient
+world. In addition to the decline in morals, there were political
+discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire.
+
+To remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire
+and endeavor of Confucius. The most marked feature in the religion of
+the Chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this
+worship he did not seek to change. "Confucius taught three thousand
+disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. Like
+Plato and Xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his
+maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to
+the national collection of the sacred books called the 'Nim Classes.'"
+
+Confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to
+nothing of his early years. At fifteen years of age, however, we are
+told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under
+considerable difficulties, his family being poor. He married when he was
+nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son Le,
+his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living
+one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary
+nobility of China,--a class who for seventy generations were the
+recipients of the highest honors and privileges. On the birth of Le, the
+duke Ch'aou of Loo sent Confucius a present of a carp, which seems to
+indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments.
+
+At twenty years of age Confucius entered upon political duties, being
+the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability,
+he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having
+attracted the attention of his sovereign. At twenty-two he began his
+labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of
+enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. These
+were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original
+doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were
+established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years
+before he was born. There is no improbability in this alleged antiquity
+of the Chinese Empire, for Egypt at this time was a flourishing State.
+
+At twenty-nine years of age Confucius gave his attention to music, which
+he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small
+part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. Six years
+afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the
+reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put
+at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the
+Emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. It does not
+appear that Confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he
+have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. He was a mere
+seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the
+founder of the dynasty of Chow, an observer of customs, like Herodotus.
+He wandered for eight years among the various provinces of China,
+teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. Moreover, he
+was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of
+them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain
+him in his service.
+
+On the return of Confucius to Loo, he remained fifteen years without
+official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy.
+But he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his
+researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar,
+with insatiable desire of knowledge. His great gifts and learning,
+however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. He was
+made governor of an important city. As chief magistrate of this city, he
+made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. The duke,
+surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to
+govern a whole State; and Confucius told him that they could be applied
+to the government of the Empire. On this the duke appointed him
+assistant superintendent of Public Works,--a great office, held only by
+members of the ducal family. So many improvements did Confucius make in
+agriculture that he was made minister of Justice; and so wonderful was
+his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws
+in execution, since no offenders could be found. Confucius held his high
+office as minister of Justice for two years longer, and some suppose he
+was made prime minister. His authority certainly continued to increase.
+He exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private
+families,--just as Richelieu did in France, strengthening the throne at
+the expense of the nobility. It would thus seem that his political
+reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in
+times of anarchy and demoralization. So great was his fame as a
+statesman that strangers came from other States to see him.
+
+These reforms in the state of Loo gave annoyance to the neighboring
+princes; and to undermine the influence of Confucius with the duke,
+these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls,
+possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and
+twenty splendid horses. As the duke soon came to think more of his
+girls and horses than of his reforms, Confucius became disgusted,
+resigned his office, and retired to private life. Then followed thirteen
+years of homeless wandering. He was now fifty-six years of age,
+depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. He was
+accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he
+communicated his wisdom.
+
+But his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the
+respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents
+by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. The
+dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he
+was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "I have not seen one who loves
+virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. The love of
+the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a Greek and not an
+Oriental idea.
+
+In the meantime Confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and
+State to State, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became
+famous. He travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the
+people with his doctrines. A certain one of his followers was questioned
+by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was
+afraid to give a true answer. The sage hearing of it, said, "You should
+have told him, He is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge
+forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows,
+and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." How seldom is it
+that any man reaches such a height! In a single sentence the philosopher
+describes himself truly and impressively.
+
+At last, in the year 491 B.C., a new sovereign reigned in Loo, and with
+costly presents invited Confucius to return to his native State. The
+philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the
+respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt
+kindly with him. It is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected.
+The world will not bear rebukes. Even a friend, if discreet, will rarely
+venture to tell another friend his faults. Confucius told the truth when
+pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners
+and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much
+offence. Luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and
+boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from
+those whom Confucius sought to influence. Conventional, polite,
+considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the
+Chinese sage. A rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no
+weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks;
+whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same
+as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of
+propriety alone.
+
+The few remaining years of Confucius' life were spent in revising his
+writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the
+evils of the world that he could not remove. Disappointment also had
+made him cynical and bitter, like Solomon of old, although from
+different causes. He survived his son and his most beloved disciples. As
+he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no
+apprehension. Death to him was a rest. He died at the age of
+seventy-three.
+
+In the tenth book of his Analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the
+philosopher. He was a man of rule and ceremony.-He was particular about
+his dress and appearance. He was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate.
+He lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required
+to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. He drank wine
+freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this
+indulgence. I do not read that tea was then in use. He was charitable
+and hospitable, but not ostentatious. He generally travelled in a
+carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage
+in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he
+looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when
+waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he
+spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a
+higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was
+grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed
+he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did not sit on it.
+When a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for
+which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. He was capable of
+excessive grief, with all his placidity. When his favorite pupil died,
+he exclaimed, "Heaven is destroying me!" His disciples on this said,
+"Sir, your grief is excessive." "It is excessive," he replied. "If I am
+not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should I mourn?"
+
+The reigning prince of Loo caused a temple to be erected over the
+remains of Confucius, and the number of his disciples continually
+increased. The emperors of the falling dynasty of Chow had neither the
+intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but
+the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to
+perpetuate his memory. During his life Confucius found ready acceptance
+for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though
+not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to
+establish the reforms he inaugurated. After his death, however, no honor
+was too great to be rendered him. The most splendid temple in China was
+built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from
+worship. His writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice;
+schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their
+interpretation. For two thousand years Confucius has reigned
+supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four
+hundred millions.
+
+Confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of
+infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. He
+said of himself, "I have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and
+to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior
+man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not
+attained to. I am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but I am
+one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. I am a
+transmitter, and not a maker." If he did not lay claim to divine
+illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special
+purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony,
+but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most
+conservative of all known reformers.
+
+Confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his Analects, his
+book of Poetry, his book of History, and his Rules of Propriety are the
+most important. It is these which are now taught, and have been taught
+for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of China. The
+Chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. His
+writings are held in the same veneration that Christians attach to their
+own sacred literature. There is this one fundamental difference between
+the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,--that he did not like to
+talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no
+interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of
+philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries.
+Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of
+human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian
+philosophers, on the creation or end of things. He was not troubled
+about the origin or destiny of man. He meddled neither with physics nor
+metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light
+and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise
+and virtuous. He confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the
+world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies,
+proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the State;
+enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and
+fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. He was no prophet
+of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. He utters no anathemas on
+princes, and no woes on peoples. Nor does he glow with exalted hopes of
+a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. He was
+not stern and indignant like Elijah, but more like the courtier and
+counsellor Elisha. He was a man of the world, and all his teachings have
+reference to respectability in the world's regard. He doubted more than
+he believed.
+
+And yet in many of his sayings Confucius rises to an exalted height,
+considering his age and circumstances. Some of them remind us of some of
+the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind
+filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all
+virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal
+principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars
+and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the
+"superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should
+be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied,
+"Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will
+submit. But advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the
+people will not submit." Again he said, "It is virtuous manners which
+constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your
+residence where virtuous manners prevail." The following sayings remind
+me of Epictetus: "A scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is
+ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. A
+man should say, 'I am not concerned that I have no place,--I am
+concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
+known; I seek to be worthy to be known.'" Here Confucius looks to the
+essence of things, not to popular desires. In the following, on the
+other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "In serving a prince,
+frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent
+reproofs make the friendship distant." Thus he talks like Solomon.
+"Tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master
+said, 'Rotten wood cannot be carved. This Yu--what is the use of my
+reproving him?'" Of a virtuous prince, he said: "In his conduct of
+himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in
+nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he
+was just."
+
+It was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. One
+said: "It is to be heard of through the family and State." The master
+replied: "That is notoriety, not distinction." Again he said: "Though a
+man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with
+office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his
+poetical knowledge?" Again, "If a minister cannot rectify himself, what
+has he to do with rectifying others?" There is great force in this
+saying: "The superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please,
+since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with
+right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. The
+superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride
+without a dignified ease." A disciple asked him what qualities a man
+must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. The master said: "He
+must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and
+urgent, among his brethren bland." And, "The scholar who cherishes a
+love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "If a man," he said,
+"take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at
+hand." And again, "He who requires much from himself and little from
+others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." These
+proverbs remind us of Bacon: "Specious words confound virtue." "Want of
+forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "Virtue," the master
+said, "is more to man than either fire or water. I have seen men die
+from treading on water or fire, but I have never seen a man die from
+treading the course of virtue." This is a lofty sentiment, but I think
+it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "There are three
+things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: In youth
+he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and
+in old age against covetousness."
+
+I do not find anything in the sayings of Confucius that can be called
+cynical, such as we find in some of the Proverbs of Solomon, even in
+reference to women, where women were, as in most Oriental countries,
+despised. The most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this:
+"I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly
+accuse himself." His definition of perfect virtue is above that of
+Paley: "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first
+business, and success only a secondary consideration." Throughout his
+writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no
+disparagement of want of success with virtue. Nor have I found in his
+sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. He always takes
+the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity
+above all external appearances. There is a quaint common-sense in some
+of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. For
+instance: One of his disciples asked, "If you had the conduct of
+armies, whom would you have to act with you?" The master replied: "I
+would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or
+cross a river without a boat." Here something like wit and irony break
+out: "A man of the village said, 'Great is K'ung the philosopher; his
+learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any
+particular thing.' The master heard this observation, and said to his
+disciples: 'What shall I practise, charioteering or archery? I will
+practise charioteering.'"
+
+When the Duke of Loo asked about government, the master said: "Good
+government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those
+who are far off are attracted." When the Duke questioned him again on
+the same subject, he replied: "Go before the people with your example,
+and be laborious in their affairs.... Pardon small faults, and raise to
+office men of virtue and talents." "But how shall I know the men of
+virtue?" asked the duke. "Raise to office those whom you do know," The
+key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "A man who knows how
+to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to
+govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "The art of
+government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without
+weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... To
+govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness,
+who will not dare to be correct?" This is one of his favorite
+principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning
+prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "If you, Sir,
+were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would
+not steal." This was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an
+illustration of the force of a great example. Confucius rarely openly
+rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate
+for his office. He contented himself with enforcing principles. Here his
+moderation and great courtesy are seen.
+
+Confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the Pagan
+world. Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The master said: "It is
+when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a
+great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family,
+and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... The
+superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. Let him never fail
+reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to
+others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be
+brothers.... Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be
+moving continually to what is right." Fan-Chi asked about benevolence;
+the master said: "It is to love all men." Another asked about
+friendship. Confucius replied: "Faithfully admonish your friend, and
+kindly try to lead him. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not
+disgrace yourself." This saying reminds us of that of our great Master:
+"Cast not your pearls before swine." There is no greater folly than in
+making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. Some
+one asked: "What do you say about the treatment of injuries?" The master
+answered: "Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with
+kindness." Here again he was not far from the greater Teacher on the
+Mount "When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is
+not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again."
+One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the
+ancients to the men of his day. Said he: "The high-mindedness of
+antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the
+present day shows itself in license. The stern dignity of antiquity
+showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in
+quarrelsome perverseness. The policy of antiquity showed itself in
+straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." The following is a
+saying worthy of Montaigne: "Of all people, girls and servants are the
+most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose
+their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented."
+
+Such are some of the sayings of Confucius, on account of which he was
+regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in
+harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of
+morality. The greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity,
+truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do
+right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety
+extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. He
+had no theology; he confounded God with heaven and earth. He says
+nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. He
+thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and
+punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from
+his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have
+already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners
+was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to
+characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn
+national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most
+creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his
+teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but
+he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. He had no
+egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of Michael Angelo. He was
+humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not
+hilarious. Were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect
+gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his
+views of government and society than aristocratic. He seems to have
+loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. When he
+visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak
+to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be
+distinguished and powerful at no distant day. He was also remarkably
+charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon
+riches and honors. Though courted by princes he would not serve them in
+violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their
+presents. If he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. We
+cannot compare his teachings with those of Christ; they are immeasurably
+inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and
+decorous, and are on an equality with those of Solomon in moral wisdom.
+They are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their
+institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress.
+
+The worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for
+parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied
+absolute obedience to the Emperor as head of the State. Hence, the
+writings of Confucius have tended to cement the Chinese imperial
+power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his
+extraordinary posthumous influence. No wonder that emperors and rulers
+have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the State to
+establish his doctrines. Moreover, his exaltation of learning as a
+necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into
+the hands of scholars. There never was a country where scholars have
+been and still are so generally employed by Government. And as men of
+learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are
+fond of peace and detest war. Hence, under the influence of scholars the
+policy of the Chinese Government has always been mild and pacific. It is
+even paternal. It has more similarity to the governments of a remote
+antiquity than that of any existing nation. Thus is the influence of
+Confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative
+institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and
+gentleness and courtesy of manners. Above all is his influence seen in
+the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state
+and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of
+whatever tends to exalt a State and make it respectable and stable, if
+not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence.
+
+Confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his
+political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to
+his instructions. Yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been
+preserved by posterity. Perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by
+posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own
+time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all Prophets, who, being
+despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner"
+in the rebuilding of humanity. Confucius says so little about the
+subjects that interested the people of China that some suppose he had no
+religion at all. Nor did he mention but once in his writings Shang-te,
+the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from
+the worship of him. And yet there are expressions in his sayings which
+seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. He often spoke of
+Heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. Heaven to him was
+Destiny, by the power of which the world was created. By Heaven the
+virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. Out of love for the
+people, Heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. Prayer is
+unnecessary, because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul
+of man.
+
+Confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading
+principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in
+government,--of the State, of the family, and of one's self.
+Self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all
+personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed
+to others, whether above or below in social standing. He supposed that
+all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at
+length destroy the original rectitude. The "superior man," who next to
+the "sage" holds the highest place in the Confucian humanity, conquers
+the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are
+guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity.
+Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the
+superior man. This admission may have been the result of his
+extraordinary humility and modesty.
+
+In "The Great Learning" Confucius lays down the rules to enable one to
+become a superior man. The foundation of his rules is in the
+investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is
+indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of Socrates. He maintained
+that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted,
+without learning. "Without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity
+recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness."
+But mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without
+thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous."
+Complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no
+mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of Yaou
+and of Shun. The object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the
+combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to
+virtue. Virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile.
+
+The next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the
+person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious
+outward expression. Every man must guard his thoughts, words, and
+actions; and conduct must agree with words. By words the superior man
+directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. It by
+no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of
+plausible speech.
+
+The height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected
+indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his
+people and the preserver of the State. Loyalty to the sovereign is
+synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. Next to
+parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. This
+reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all
+right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of
+good. But then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is
+considered competent to rule a family or a State; for the same virtues
+which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other.
+No man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. The greatest
+stress, as we have seen, is laid by Confucius on filial piety, which
+consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to
+propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the
+State with loyalty. But while it is incumbent on a son to obey the
+wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with
+them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. All
+remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. Should these remonstrances
+fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. He
+carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son
+should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of
+right and wrong. Brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "Happy,"
+says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of
+lutes and harps. The love which binds brother to brother is second only
+to that which is due from children to parents. It consists in mutual
+friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the
+younger to the elder brothers."
+
+While obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, Confucius
+said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife.
+He had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife
+after living with her for a year. He looked on women as every way
+inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. It was not
+until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in
+China. Hence, according to Confucius, the great object of marriage is to
+increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. Women could be
+lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women
+completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of
+slaves. The failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great
+blot on the system of Confucius as a scheme of morals.
+
+But the sage exalts friendship. Everybody, from the Emperor downward,
+must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of
+blood. "Friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the
+weak, and medicine to the sick." One of the strongest bonds to
+friendship is literature and literary exertion. Men are enjoined by
+Confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as
+they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great
+officers. In the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity
+and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "He who is not trusted by his
+friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not
+obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends."
+
+Everything is subordinated to the State; but, on the other hand, the
+family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main
+object of good government. "No virtue," said Emperor Kuh, 2435 B.C.,
+"is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
+government than to profit all men." When he was asked what should be
+done for the people, he replied, "Enrich them;" and when asked what more
+should be done, he replied, "Teach them." On these two principles the
+whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the
+people, and their education. He laid great stress on knowledge, as
+leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. He made the
+profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen
+could aspire. He himself was a teacher. All sages are teachers, though
+all teachers are not sages.
+
+Confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. The
+officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his
+teachings. It was in contrast to these officials that he painted the
+ideal times of Kings Wan and Woo. The two motive-powers of government,
+according to Confucius, are righteousness and the observance of
+ceremonies. Righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a
+rule to the heart. What he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety,
+intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a
+reverential manner among all classes. Doubtless he over-estimated the
+force of example, since there are men in every country and community who
+will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character
+and conduct.
+
+The ruling desire of Confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and
+happy. The welfare of the people, the right government of the State, and
+the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. As
+conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such
+as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. He himself
+summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form:
+"Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." Here
+we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." Reciprocity,
+and that alone, was his law of life. He does not inculcate forgiveness
+of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye.
+
+As to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. His humility
+and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as
+marked as his humility. He was the most learned man in the empire, yet
+lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. He even disclaimed the
+qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "I am,"
+said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to
+be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." He was
+always ready to serve his sovereign or the State; but he neither grasped
+office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own
+interests. He was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. He carried
+into practice all the rules he taught. Poverty was his lot in life, but
+he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity
+which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal
+character. Indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his
+genius; and yet I think his genius has been underrated. His greatness is
+seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty
+their merits or exalted their rank. No one ever disputed his influence
+and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of
+the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage,
+and men of letters were driven behind the scenes.
+
+The literary labors of Confucius were very great, since he made the
+whole classical literature of China accessible to his countrymen. The
+fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. His works
+have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. They
+have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as
+text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire,
+which includes one-fourth of the human race. To all educated men the
+"Book of Changes" (Yin-King), the "Book of Poetry" (She-King), the "Book
+of History" (Shoo-King), the "Book of Rites" (Le-King), the "Great
+Learning" (Ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the
+"Doctrine of the Mean" (Chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of
+conduct, and the "Confucian Analects" (Lun-yu), recording his
+conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the Works
+of Mencius, the greatest of his disciples. There is no record of any
+books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the
+Works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the
+Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among the Christians. What an
+influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no
+claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man,
+worshipped as a god!
+
+No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns
+and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than
+his memory and principles were duly honored. But it was not until the
+accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor
+collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power
+to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China. It must be
+borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had
+ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by
+his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.
+Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage,
+and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming
+dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,--"The
+perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius." No higher title could be
+conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. For
+more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor,
+and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. His maxims of
+morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding
+generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han
+dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially
+adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is
+phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as
+we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines,
+from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And
+yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he
+recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal
+merit,--thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever
+their original social rank. The great political truth that the welfare
+of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared
+the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the
+scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any
+nation's history.
+
+This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without
+some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually
+and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius
+paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and
+philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his
+travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at
+present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not
+receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared
+nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages,
+while he himself was a great awakener of thought. He was, like
+Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead
+people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations
+existed. He held that man's nature was good, and that primitive
+pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. He maintained
+that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and
+that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were
+meant to avert. While this great and profound man was in some respects
+superior to Confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior
+people of China. Taoism rivals Buddhism as the religion of the lower
+classes, and Taoism combined with Buddhism has more adherents than
+Confucianism. But the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to
+Confucius as the greatest man whom China has produced.
+
+Of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of Chinese have now
+but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is
+the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are
+the grossest formalism. But as a practical system of morals in the days
+of its early establishment, the religion of Confucius ranks very high
+among the best developments of Paganism. Certainly no man ever had a
+deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to
+the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have
+practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the
+Hindus and Chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand
+the changes which foreign conquest and Christian missionary enterprise
+and civilization are producing. In the East the old religions gave place
+to Mohamedanism, as in the West they disappeared before the power of
+Christianity. And these conquering religions retain and extend their
+hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their
+fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal God, and the
+brotherhood of universal man. With the ideas prevalent among all sects
+that God is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence,
+and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by
+kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue
+and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this
+elevating faith.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D.; Rawlinson's Religions of the
+Ancient World; Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions; Johnson's Oriental
+Religions; Davis's Chinese; Nevins's China and the Chinese; Giles's
+Chinese Sketches; Lenormant's Ancient History of the East; Hue's
+Christianity in China; Legge's Prolegomena to the Shoo-King; Lecomte's
+China; Dr. S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom; China, by Professor
+Douglas; The Religions of China, by James Legge.
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+SEEKING AFTER TRUTH.
+
+
+Whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns
+in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question,
+or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was
+one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of
+consequence. In the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our
+superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost
+limit. They advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena
+to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the
+establishment of ethical principles which even Christianity did not
+supersede.
+
+The progress of philosophy from Thales to Plato is the most stupendous
+triumph of the human intellect. The reason of man soared to the loftiest
+flights that it has ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the
+most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the
+world. It exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever
+raised. It originated and carried out the boldest speculations
+respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. It
+established important psychological truths and created a method for the
+solution of abstruse questions. It went on from point to point, until
+all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its
+operations were subjected to a rigid method. The Romans never added a
+single principle to the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated; the
+ingenious scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas;
+and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same
+circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years
+ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual
+subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths
+were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus
+Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans
+as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept
+away and Greek cities became a part of the Roman empire. The Romans
+learned what the Greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as
+art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the
+Rhine and the Po to the Nile and the Tigris.
+
+Greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient
+civilization long after the Greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws
+of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of God or future
+rewards and punishments. Although it was purely Grecian in its origin
+and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the Roman
+schools. The Romans did not originate medicine, but Galen was one of its
+greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but Virgil
+sang to its measure; they did not create Ionic capitals, but their
+cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as
+those which called out the admiration of Pericles. So, if they did not
+originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still
+its truths were systematized and explained by Cicero, and formed no
+small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought
+everywhere to be enriched. It formed an essential part of the
+intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not
+prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. And as it was the
+noblest triumph which the human mind, under Pagan influences, ever
+achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which
+man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. Philosophy, like
+art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed
+away, leaving the world in night. Why was so bright a glory followed by
+so dismal a shame? What a comment is this on the greatness and
+littleness of man!
+
+In all probability the development of Greek philosophy originated with
+the Ionian Sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the East. It
+is questionable whether the Oriental nations had any philosophy distinct
+from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early
+speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a
+very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an
+adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence
+of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the
+Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. But the Orientals had theogonies, not
+philosophies. The Indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient
+revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal
+life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility
+could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout
+contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or
+a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and
+hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty
+of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable
+ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the Supreme
+with Nature. Nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an
+occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound
+conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. The
+Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series
+of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even
+to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought.
+It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries
+into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of
+intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those
+who observed Nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy
+and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among
+the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished
+them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning.
+
+We do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until Thales
+arose, the first of the Ionian school. He was born at Miletus, a Greek
+colony in Asia Minor, about the year 636 B.C., when Ancus Martius was
+king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings
+behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on
+account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not
+here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great,
+and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for
+instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year
+into three hundred and sixty-five days.
+
+     "And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
+     Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark
+     Of the Phoenecian sailor o'er the sea."
+
+He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of
+his remarkable sayings. The chief claim of Thales to a lofty rank among
+sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical
+solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical
+representations. Thales felt that there was a grand question to be
+answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "Philosophy," it has
+been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". It
+was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental
+principle of things. Thales looked around him upon Nature, upon the sea
+and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital
+principle. He felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in
+the ground beneath his feet. He saw that plants were sustained by rain
+and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water,
+and that to fishes it was the native element. What more important or
+vital than water? It was the _prima materia_, the [Greek: archae] the
+beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. How so crude a
+speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult
+to conjecture. It is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the
+beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his
+mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin
+of the universe. It was these questions, and the solution of them, which
+marked the Ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of
+their minds. What is the great first cause of all things? Thales saw it
+in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and
+this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of
+the world. It is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated
+Nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. He regarded the entire
+world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming
+itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. This
+moisture endues the universe with vitality. The world, he thought, was
+full of gods, but they had their origin in water. He had no conception
+of God as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. He had a great and
+inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual,
+controlling, and personal deity.
+
+Anaximenes, the disciple of Thales, pursued his master's inquiries and
+adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is
+unknown,--probably 500 B.C. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of
+matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything
+immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too,
+speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not
+water, was the primal cause. This element seems to be universal. We
+breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,--that is,
+pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All
+things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports
+all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal
+motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our
+own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable
+principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he
+regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but
+after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. And he
+attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the
+first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of
+change is the eternal motion of the air.
+
+Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, one of the disciples of Anaximenes,
+born 500 B.C., also believed that air was the principle of the
+universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without
+recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. He made air and
+the soul identical. "For," says he, "man and all other animals breathe
+and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." And as
+it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an
+eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with
+consciousness. Diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an
+intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. Anaximenes
+regarded air as having life; Diogenes saw in it also intelligence. Thus
+philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for
+the origin of all things, according to Diogenes, must exist in
+_intelligence_. According to Diogenes Laertius, he said: "It appears to
+me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about
+which there can be no dispute."
+
+Heraclitus of Ephesus, classed by Ritter among the Ionian philosophers,
+was born 503 B.C. Like others of his school, he sought a physical ground
+for all phenomena. The elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since
+all things are convertible into it. In one of its modifications this
+fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or
+principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless
+activity. "If Anaximenes," says Maurice, not very clearly, "discovered
+that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the
+acts and functions of his bodily frame, Heraclitus found that there was
+life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the
+very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a
+poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him
+with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of
+life.... He proclaimed the absolute vitality of Nature, the endless
+change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual
+things in contrast with the eternal Being,--the supreme harmony which
+rules over all." To trace the divine energy of life in all things was
+the general problem of the philosophy of Heraclitus, and this spirit was
+akin to the pantheism of the East. But he was one of the greatest
+speculative intellects that preceded Plato, and of all the physical
+theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. He taught the germs of
+what was afterward more completely developed. "From his theory of
+perpetual fluxion," says Archer Butler, "Plato derived the necessity of
+seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas."
+Heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical
+and arrogant.
+
+Anaxagoras, the most famous of the Ionian philosophers, was born 500
+B.C., and belonged to a rich and noble family. Regarding philosophy as
+the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study
+of Nature. He went to Athens in the most brilliant period of her history,
+and had Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates for pupils. He taught that the
+great moving force of Nature was intellect ([Greek: nous]). Intelligence
+was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of
+motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply
+the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of
+Nature is effected. He thus laid the foundation of a new system, under
+which the Attic philosophers sought to explain Nature, by regarding as
+the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but
+rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a
+grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. This explanation of
+material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of
+Anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the
+world. Moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which
+we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the
+real component particles of things. Like all the great inquirers, he was
+impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with
+what there is to be learned. "Nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing
+is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the
+complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of
+his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind.
+Anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([Greek: nous]) gave to all those
+material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the
+impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this
+impulse was given in a circular direction. Hence that the sun, moon, and
+stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle.
+
+In the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the
+Ionians, sought to explain Nature, but by a different method.
+Anaximander, born 610 B.C., was one of the original mathematicians of
+Greece, yet, like Pythagoras and Thales, speculated on the beginning of
+things. His principle was that _The Infinite_ is the origin of all
+things. He used the word _[Greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the
+material out of which all things were formed, as the Everlasting, the
+Divine. The idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause
+was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at
+that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such
+partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar
+"elements" could be the primal cause of all things. It seems almost like
+the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the
+first cause in impersonal Force, or infinite Energy. Yet it is not
+really easy to understand Anaximander's meaning, other than that the
+abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. The speculations
+of Thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the
+universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to
+be the origin of all things. Anaximander, accustomed to view things in
+the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his
+speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure
+_deduction_. The primary Being is a unity, one in all, comprising within
+itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are
+composed. It is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things
+can take place. Thus Anaximander, an original but vague thinker,
+prepared the way for Pythagoras.
+
+This later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 B.C.,
+stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded
+in dim magnificence. The old historians paint him as "clothed in robes
+of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic,
+rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to
+the music of Homer and Hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres."
+
+Pythagoras was supposed to be a native of Samos. When quite young, being
+devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to Egypt, where he
+learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. He
+then returned to Samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a
+tyrant he fled to Crotona, in Italy, where he gained great reputation
+for wisdom, and made laws for the Italians. His pupils were about three
+hundred in number. He wrote three books, which were extant in the time
+of Diogenes Laertius,--one on Education, one on Politics, and one on
+Natural Philosophy. He also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which
+he gave the name of _Kosmos_.
+
+Among the ethical principles which Pythagoras taught was that men ought
+not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is
+good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one
+should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property
+of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger.
+He forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to
+worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood.
+
+Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights
+among the Greeks. But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our
+attention. His main principle was that _number_ is the essence of
+things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to
+law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical
+development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.
+He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on
+the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming
+that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the
+world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws
+which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the
+necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. The Infinite of
+Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras. He believed that the soul is
+incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and
+harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. Hence the tendency
+of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law
+and order,--of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.
+Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and
+sought as the end of life. "It is impossible not to see in these lofty
+speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius,
+seeking after God, if haply it might find Him."
+
+We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy. The Ionic
+philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the
+elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying
+an intelligent creator. The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the
+realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic
+pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source
+of truth is independent of the senses. Here they were forestalled by the
+Hindu sages.
+
+The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian
+city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as
+a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest
+truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he
+settled. The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the
+great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe. From the
+principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass
+from non-existence to existence. All things that exist are created by
+supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. From this truth that
+God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. A
+plurality of gods is impossible. With these sublime views,--the unity
+and eternity and omnipotence of God,--Xenophanes boldly attacked the
+popular errors of his day. He denounced the transference to the deity of
+the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the
+doctrine of migration of souls. Thus he sings,--
+
+     "Such things of the gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
+     As would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,--
+     Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other."
+
+And again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,--
+
+     "But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
+     And have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure;
+     But there's but one God alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals,
+     Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas."
+
+Such were the sublime meditations of Xenophanes. He believed in the
+_One_, which is God; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being
+was not a personal God, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all
+space. He could not separate God from the world, nor could he admit the
+existence of world which is not God. He was a monotheist, but his
+monotheism was pantheism. He saw God in all the manifestations of
+Nature. This did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he
+therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of
+philosophy. But there was no cynicism in his doubt. It was the
+soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the
+mighty questions that he burned to know. There was no way to arrive at
+the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." It was not
+disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that
+oppressed him. He could not solve the questions pertaining to God. What
+uninstructed reason can? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst
+thou know the Almighty unto perfection?" What was impossible to Job was
+not possible to Xenophanes. But he had attained a recognition of the
+unity and perfections of God; and this conviction he would spread
+abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. I
+have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so
+enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money,
+comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of God. This
+was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. It was a higher
+mission than that of Homer, great as his was, though not so successful.
+
+Parmenides of Elea, born about the year 530 B.C., followed out the
+system of Xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of
+God. With Parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. Being
+is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_;
+the _All_ is thought and intelligence. He maintained the uncertainty of
+knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. He did not
+deny the certainty of reason. He was the first who drew a distinction
+between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the
+reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. From the
+uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the
+twofold system of true and apparent knowledge.
+
+Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C.,
+brought nothing new to the system, but invented _Dialectics_, the art of
+disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so
+powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired
+among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error
+through the _reductio ad absurdum_. While Parmenides sought to establish
+the doctrine of the _One_, Zeno proved the non-existence of the _Many_.
+He did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real
+existences. It was the mission of Zeno to establish the doctrines of his
+master. But in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a
+new method of argument. So he carried on his argumentation by question
+and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he
+called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication.
+
+Empedocles, born 444 B.C., like others of the Eleatics, complained of
+the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. He
+regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force,
+the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which
+or whom the world was formed. Thus "God is love" is a sublime doctrine
+which philosophy revealed to the Greeks, and the emphatic and continuous
+and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation
+made by Jesus, the Christ, who resolved all the Law and the Gospel into
+the element of Love,--fatherly on the part of God, filial and fraternal
+on the part of men.
+
+Thus did the Eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously
+with the Ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge,
+taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations
+of sense by the notions of reason. But both schools, although they did
+not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened
+freedom of thought and inquiry. They raised up workmen for more
+enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the Middle Ages
+prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles.
+They were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as
+genius. They hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of
+their day. They handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness,
+and hence were often persecuted by the people. They did not establish
+moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty
+disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with
+holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to
+God and Nature. Thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to
+studies. Pythagoras spent twenty-two years in Egypt to learn its
+science. Xenophanes wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist of truth.
+Parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of
+sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth
+in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." Zeno declined all
+worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his
+master. Heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of Ephesus that he might
+have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. Anaxagoras allowed
+his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "To
+philosophy," said he, "I owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity."
+All these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of
+their times. They laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was
+constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology
+reached the dignity of science. They too were prophets, although
+unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the
+science which explores and illustrates the works of God shall enlarge,
+enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative Father.
+
+Nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and
+blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories
+which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world
+ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when
+pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one
+another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men
+denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away
+from the human mind.
+
+This spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and
+prosperity which followed the Persian War. Athens became a great centre
+of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. Politics absorbed the
+minds of the people. Glory and splendor were followed by corruption of
+morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. Philosophy went out of
+fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. More scientific
+studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of
+utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry,
+mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men,
+command talent, and lead to certain reward. In Athens, rhetoric,
+mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations
+on God and Providence. Renown and wealth could be secured only by
+readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
+immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
+an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
+special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
+expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
+right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
+truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
+the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
+and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
+should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
+of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
+any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
+spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
+eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
+century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
+fashion and of political power.
+
+These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
+the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
+trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
+in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
+who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
+philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
+esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
+of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
+missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
+ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
+astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
+polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
+as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
+men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
+Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
+denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
+the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
+thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
+the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
+vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They
+had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age,
+_paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of
+immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the
+intellectual leaders of society. If they did not advance positive
+truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no
+hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be
+reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply
+knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to
+gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old
+sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the
+development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to
+literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in
+prose writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate
+composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the
+significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating
+style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences.
+
+The ridicule and scepticism of the Sophists brought out the great powers
+of Socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any
+man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse
+he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of
+error. He inaugurated a new era. Born in Athens in the year 470 B.C.,
+the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after
+truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations.
+He was the mortal enemy of the Sophists, whom he encountered, as Pascal
+did the Jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless
+logic. It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and
+Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise
+men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of
+being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they
+imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The
+Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of
+their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the
+Philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom.
+
+Like the earlier philosophers, Socrates disdained wealth, ease, and
+comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more
+corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when
+success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the
+arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often
+refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. He was what
+in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly
+clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with
+everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous,
+especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating
+opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be
+extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the
+world. He attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it
+was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he
+attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible
+fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in
+appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy
+belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even
+Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman
+fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him,
+although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res
+angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the
+divinity of his nature. "I have heard Pericles," said the most
+dissipated and voluptuous man in Athens, "and other excellent orators,
+but was not moved by them; while this Marsyas--this Satyr--so affects me
+that the life I lead is hardly worth living, and I stop my ears as from
+the Sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that I may not sit down and
+grow old in listening to his talk."
+
+Socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely
+new path. He declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other
+people of theirs. He did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose
+error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral
+obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the
+immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the
+practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of
+morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the
+immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty
+platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock,
+he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist.
+It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and
+the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious man, recognized
+Providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. He did not
+presume to inquire into the Divine essence, yet he believed that the
+gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of
+goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a
+supreme Intelligence that governed the world. Hence he was hated by the
+Sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of God.
+From the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the
+immortality of the soul. With him the end of life was reason and
+intelligence. He deduced the existence of God from the order and harmony
+of Nature, belief in which was irresistible. He endeavored to connect
+the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the
+practical welfare of society. In this light Socrates stands out the
+grandest personage of Pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of
+ethics, as a man who recognized the Divine.
+
+So far as he was concerned in the development of Greek philosophy
+proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, Yet he gave a
+turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge,
+and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he
+pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor
+of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain
+metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he
+reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable.
+He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive
+methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. Although he
+employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the
+contemplation of Nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look
+inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil
+Plato. The previous philosophers had given their attention to external
+nature; Socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and
+directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. And as he
+considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on
+ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by
+which alone man could become better and wiser. To know one's self,--in
+other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed
+with Thales. Cicero said of him, "Socrates brought down philosophy from
+the heavens to the earth." He did not disdain the subjects which chiefly
+interested the Sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly
+discussed moral questions, such as, What is piety? What is the just and
+the unjust? What is temperance? What is courage? What is the character
+fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human
+relationships.
+
+These questions were discussed by Socrates in a striking manner, and by
+a method peculiarly his own. "Professing ignorance, he put perhaps this
+question: What is law? It was familiar, and was answered offhand.
+Socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to
+specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer
+inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too
+narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The
+respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other
+questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the
+amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle
+himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an
+admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original
+inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." Thus, by this system of
+cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the
+dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into
+species and genera. The discussion first turns upon the meaning of some
+generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various
+particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to
+comprehend, but does not. Socrates broke up the one into many by his
+analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he
+separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to
+precision in the use of definitions. It was thus that he exposed the
+false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed
+ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner,
+while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently
+sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse,
+absolutely ridiculous.
+
+Thus Socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science
+had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could
+be established. Here he was not unlike Bacon, who pointed out the way
+whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or
+advocating any system; but the Athenian was unlike Bacon in the object
+of his inquiries. Bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_
+speculations, and Socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. He
+never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at
+once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not
+comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting
+scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical
+faculties, that Socrates manifested originality. It was his aim to force
+the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization,
+whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. He thus struck
+out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original
+thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. He was a religious and
+intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the Platos and Aristotles
+of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. This was his mission,
+and he declared it by talking. He did not lecture; he conversed. For
+more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality,
+until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to
+death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the
+Sophists accepted and practised. He probably might have been acquitted
+if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of
+usefulness had passed away.
+
+The services which Socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by
+Tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _Negative_, inasmuch as
+he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on
+substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when
+necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is
+capable and what is not of being accurately known. _Positive_, inasmuch
+as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our
+understanding, and of which man is the centre."
+
+Socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like Xenophanes. He
+did not bequeath a system of doctrines. He had however his disciples,
+who followed in the path which he suggested. Among these were
+Aristippus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, Phaedo of Elis, and Plato,
+all of whom were pupils of Socrates and founders of schools. Some only
+partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. Nor can
+it be said that all of them advanced science. Aristippus, the founder of
+the Cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that
+pleasure is the end of life. Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynics, was
+both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but
+despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute
+the opinions of another. He made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and
+cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful
+man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple
+Diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and
+body, brutal, scornful, proud. To men who maintained that science was
+impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were
+disciples of Socrates. Euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a
+century later--merely gave a new edition of the Eleatic doctrines, and
+Phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good."
+
+It was not till Plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy
+was founded. He was born of noble Athenian parents, 429 B.C., the year
+that Pericles died, and the second year of the Peloponnesian War,--the
+most active period of Grecian thought. He had a severe education,
+studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with
+philosophy. He was only twenty when he found out Socrates, with whom he
+remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. He
+then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day,
+especially in Egypt. When he returned he began to teach the doctrines of
+his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near
+Athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and
+statues. This was called the Academy, and gave a name to his system of
+philosophy. It is this only with which we have to do. It is not the
+calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that I would present, but _his
+contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his
+master. Surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department
+of human inquiry than Plato. He may not have had the originality or
+keenness of Socrates, but he was more profound. He was pre-eminently a
+great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his
+"Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the
+ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. He
+adopted the Socratic method and enlarged it. Says Lewes:--
+
+"Analysis, as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole
+into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... The individual
+thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the
+latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper
+definitions, had no conception of the classification of those
+definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction
+of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into
+man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of
+dialectics."
+
+Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of
+Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the
+perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and
+rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors.
+
+Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or
+abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and
+these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_;
+and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of
+dialectics. He maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has
+a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of
+conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions
+received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and
+permanent existence. Hence his writings became the great fountain-head
+of the Ideal philosophy. In his assertion of the real existence of so
+abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted
+to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of
+philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence
+of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of
+_numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense
+there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain
+principles concerning which there can be no dispute. The soul apprehends
+the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that
+we are to find the realm of ideas. Now, God is the supreme idea. To know
+God, then, should be the great aim of life. We know him through the
+desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels its affinity
+with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The
+longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. Love, then, is the bond which
+unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
+outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
+Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
+soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
+sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
+knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
+correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
+can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
+inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
+is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
+justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
+philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
+of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
+man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
+to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
+it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
+which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--
+
+"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
+they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
+the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
+immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
+soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
+consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
+disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
+predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
+philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
+conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
+unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
+good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
+divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."
+
+That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
+be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
+ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
+and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
+view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
+what Kant was to the Germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each
+other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.
+
+The ablest part of the lectures of Archer Butler, of Dublin, is devoted
+to the Platonic philosophy. It is at once a criticism and a eulogium. No
+modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the
+crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato,
+his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most
+ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple.
+Butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a
+contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. As
+the admirers of Ralph Waldo Emerson claim that he, more than any other
+man of our times, entered into the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, I
+introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest
+admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient Pagan world, hoping
+that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:--
+
+These sentences [of Plato] contain the culture of nations; these are
+the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures.
+A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry,
+language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There never
+was such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are
+still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he
+among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all
+these drift-bowlders were detached.... Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern
+pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are
+absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of
+the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making,
+surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact
+to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in
+his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of
+Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia as the base. In short, a
+balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... The physical
+philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of
+atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in
+their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural
+laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
+world, but bare inventories and lists. To the study of Nature he
+therefore prefixes the dogma,--'Let us declare the cause which led the
+Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; ...
+he wished that all things should be as much as possible like
+himself.'...
+
+Plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power,
+namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so
+disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... These expansions, or
+extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon
+falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the
+long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... His definition of
+ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever
+discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era
+in the world.
+
+The great disciple of Plato was Aristotle, and he carried on the
+philosophical movement which Socrates had started to the highest limit
+that it ever reached in the ancient world. He was born at Stagira, 384
+B.C., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When Plato
+returned from Sicily Aristotle joined his disciples at Athens, and was
+his pupil for seventeen years. On the death of Plato, he went on his
+travels and became the tutor of Alexander the Great, and in 335 B.C.
+returned to Athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school
+in the Lyceum. He taught while walking up and down the shady paths which
+surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the Peripatetic,
+which has clung to his name and philosophy. His school had a great
+celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen,
+historians, and orators. Aristotle taught for thirteen years, during
+which time he composed most of his greater works. He not only wrote on
+dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments.
+His work on "The History of Animals" was deemed so important that his
+royal pupil Alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an
+enormous sum--for the collection of materials. He also wrote on ethics
+and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and
+speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. He was one of the most
+voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man
+whose writings have come down to us. Nor has any one of the ancients
+exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. He
+was an oracle until the revival of learning. Hegel says:--
+
+"Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the
+universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered
+wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him
+their separation and commencement."
+
+He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an
+historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto
+treated by the earlier philosophers. Says Adolph Stahr:--
+
+"Plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of
+the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in
+the eternal immutable ideas. Aristotle laid down the proposition that
+the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is
+powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a
+living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of
+its own energy."
+
+There can be no doubt as to Aristotle's marvellous power of
+systematizing. Collecting together all the results of ancient
+speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a
+thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. From a literary point
+of view, Plato was doubtless his superior; but Plato was a poet, making
+philosophy divine and musical, while Aristotle's investigations spread
+over a far wider range. He differed from Plato chiefly in relation to
+the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which
+divided them. As he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena,
+he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and
+established thereby a necessary element in human science. But being
+bound to matter, he did not soar, as Plato did, into the higher regions
+of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of God or of
+immortality. Neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his
+definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a
+perfect life.
+
+With Aristotle closed the great Socratic movement in the history of
+speculation. When Socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of
+scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting
+Nature. He removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of
+investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of
+Nature to the study of man himself. He bade men to look inward. Plato
+accepted his method, but applied it more universally. Like Socrates,
+however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which
+physics were only subordinate. The problem he sought to solve was the
+way to live like the Deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim
+of life. With Aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his
+main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. He thus, by
+bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch
+of scepticism.
+
+Both Plato and Aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but,
+as we have said, Aristotle differed from his master respecting the
+theory of ideas. He did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but
+he did deny that they have an objective existence. He maintained that
+individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they
+can be known only by _sensation_. Sensation thus becomes the basis of
+knowledge. Plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but Aristotle
+made _experience_ that basis. Plato directed man to the contemplation of
+Ideas; Aristotle, to the observation of Nature. Instead of proceeding
+synthetically and dialectically like Plato, he pursues an analytic
+course. His method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain
+principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. It would seem that
+positive science began with Aristotle, since he maintained that
+experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his
+conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of
+experience from which to generalize with effect. It is only a most
+extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition
+which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. Aristotle reasoned without
+sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms.
+
+Aristotle was the father of logic, and Hegel and Kant think there has
+been no improvement upon it since his day. This became to him the real
+organon of science. "He supposed it was not merely the instrument of
+thought, but the instrument of investigation." Hence it was futile for
+purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought.
+Induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of
+logic. The one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a
+conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at
+particulars. The latter more particularly characterized his logic, which
+he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and
+skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful
+dialectical exercise. This syllogistic process of reasoning would be
+incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the
+_particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world
+of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. Thus
+Aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his
+system, when carried out by the mediaeval Schoolmen, led to a spirit of
+useless quibbling. Instead of interrogating Nature they interrogated
+their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. From want of proper
+knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of
+Aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future
+investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater
+collection of facts and materials.
+
+Though Aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit
+great parsimony of language. There is no fascination in his style. It is
+without ornament, and very condensed. His merit consisted in great
+logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms.
+
+Philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power
+and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated
+in Aristotle. He completed the great fabric of which Thales laid the
+foundation. The subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to
+ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena.
+The Sceptics, like Pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in
+disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of
+existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by
+man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility.
+They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to
+comprehend them.
+
+The Epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their
+view these did not contribute to happiness. The subject of their
+inquiries was happiness, not truth. What will promote this? was the
+subject of their speculation. Epicurus, born 342 B.C., contended that
+pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own
+sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. He taught
+that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments
+should be limited. He was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded
+contentedness with a little to be a great good. He placed wealth not in
+great possessions, but in few wants. He sought to widen the domain of
+pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of
+life as the highest. Nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from
+misery, as the Buddhists think. Epicurus has been much misunderstood,
+and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts
+of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism
+was the great feature of society. Epicurus had much of the spirit of a
+practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a
+religious man. He himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it
+was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous,
+not because it was his duty. His writings were very voluminous, and in
+his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. His
+followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and
+effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious
+philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant
+should be the object of existence. Sir James Mackintosh says:--
+
+"To Epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in
+succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without
+a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable
+value, not peculiar to the Epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations
+in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a
+motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which,
+however, it is very far from solely constituting. With that truth the
+Epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes
+happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the
+happiness of the agent. Although, therefore, he has the merit of having
+more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet
+his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those
+exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold,
+or tender virtues can exist."
+
+The Stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they
+added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they
+invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological
+inquiries. Their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a
+great part of the system of Greek philosophy, the Stoics are well worthy
+of attention. Some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among
+them,--like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy they
+taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated.
+
+The founder of this sect, Zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island
+of Cyprus, about the year 350 B.C. He was the son of wealthy parents,
+but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. He was so good a man, and so
+profoundly revered by the Athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys
+of their citadel. He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and
+sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when
+Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had
+lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
+Deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of
+religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer
+after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the
+_Stoa_, "the Porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. Hence
+the name of his school. He was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions,
+although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "The
+Sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. They had shown that
+perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a
+certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between
+appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build
+upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then
+they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But Zeno,
+taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did Buddha
+before him, and long after him Reid and Beattie, when they combated the
+scepticism of Hume.
+
+Philosophy, according to Zeno and other Stoics, was intimately connected
+with the duties of practical life. The contemplation, meditation, and
+thought recommended by Plato and Aristotle seemed only a covert
+recommendation of selfish enjoyment. The wisdom which it should be the
+aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with
+Nature. To live harmoniously with Nature is to exclude all personal
+ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised.
+And as all moral action must be in harmony with Nature the law of
+destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate.
+With the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their
+system, the Stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a
+citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. They
+made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_
+and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a
+knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a
+conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_,
+or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. They made
+_perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system.
+The perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of
+external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from
+desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is
+exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the
+restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. Nor
+must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member
+of the whole body of mankind. He ought to marry, and to take part in
+public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising
+sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness.
+Yet with this ideal the Stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like
+true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond
+the reach of man. They were discontented with themselves and with all
+around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. They had a
+profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls
+"success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty
+and stern virtue in their degenerate times. Their God was made subject
+to Fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with Nature. Thus their
+system was pantheistic. But they maintained the dignity of reason, and
+sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully
+to reach.
+
+Zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his
+constitution was not strong. He retained his powers by great
+abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. He was a
+modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the
+society of more than two or three friends at a time. He was as plain in
+his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and
+propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines
+the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the
+loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not
+deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most
+faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines
+of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though
+influential party.
+
+With the Stoics ended among the Greeks all inquiry of a philosophical
+nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when
+philosophy was revived in the Christian schools of Alexandria, where the
+Hebrew element of faith was united with the Greek ideal of reason. The
+struggles of so many great thinkers, from Thales to Aristotle, all ended
+in doubt and in despair. It was discovered that all of them were wrong,
+or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the
+fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple
+of Truth, in which they were laying foundation stones.
+
+The bright and glorious period of Greek philosophy was from Socrates to
+Aristotle. Philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and
+ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which
+was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever
+achieved. Socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. He
+reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his
+instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a
+knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which
+dwells within him, and which also rules the world. He believes in
+science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which
+consists in the knowledge of the good.
+
+Plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his
+spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring
+boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the
+present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates
+on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena; he
+does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things,
+but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and
+prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. The sensible
+is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he
+dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist,
+severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty
+and goodness.
+
+Then Aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to
+exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of
+sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from
+phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. But
+everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is
+not easy to arrive at truth. A cold doubt creeps into the experimental
+mind of Aristotle, with all his learning and his logic.
+
+The Epicureans arise. Misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of
+their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They
+despair of truth.
+
+But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the
+impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on
+virtue. Yet it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral
+governor, but subject to necessity.
+
+Thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the God who
+was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of Abraham, Moses, David, and
+Isaiah. And yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors
+of the ancient world. They gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while
+by their lives they set examples of a pure morality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor
+were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. It was only the
+ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them.
+They were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. They had
+conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air.
+
+There were doubtless students of the Greek philosophy among the Romans,
+perhaps as early as Cato the Censor. But there were only two persons of
+note in Rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of Cicero,--Aurafanius
+and Rubinus,--and these were Epicureans.
+
+Cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so
+greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was
+only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a
+school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those
+subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools
+Cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore
+looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. Yet he
+held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical
+investigation. He adopted the doctrine of Socrates as to the pursuit of
+moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of
+human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches.
+He had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the
+clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. He
+thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of God, or the nature of
+the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon
+the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive
+inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established.
+
+Cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the
+ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of
+speculation. This is especially seen in his treatise "De Finibus Bonorum
+et Malorum," in which the opinions of all the Grecian schools
+concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. Nor does he
+hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge
+of Nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods
+and men. Yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to
+indulge. It is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently
+claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man
+with a guide and rule of life. Even in the consideration of moral
+questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in
+this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to
+establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully
+treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the
+doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the
+Academy. He admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of God,
+but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme God as the
+creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all
+mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. He seems to
+believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's
+immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the
+dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to
+virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the
+imitation of the divine.
+
+Thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of
+Cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any
+philosophical principle. We might enumerate his various opinions, and
+show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the
+development of philosophy. His views, interesting as they are, and
+generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science.
+He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their
+utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers of the
+Christian Church. He was esteemed for his general enlightenment. He
+softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day,
+and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He was a critic of
+philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare.
+
+If anybody advanced philosophy among the Romans it was Epictetus, and
+even he only in the realm of ethics. Quintius Sextius, in the time of
+Augustus, had revived the Pythagorean doctrines. Seneca had recommended
+the severe morality of the Stoics, but added nothing that was not
+previously known.
+
+The greatest light among the Romans was the Phrygian slave Epictetus,
+who was born about fifty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and
+taught in the time of the Emperor Domitian. Though he did not leave any
+written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his
+disciple Arrian, who had for him the reverence that Plato had for
+Socrates. The loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think
+that he must have been indebted to Christianity, for no one before him
+revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. He was a Stoic,
+but he held in the highest estimation Socrates and Plato. It is not for
+the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. He was
+not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground
+of all the old inquirers after truth. With him, as to Cicero and Seneca,
+philosophy is the wisdom of life. He sets no value on logic, nor much on
+physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His
+great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest
+self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he
+would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that
+they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the
+Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would
+not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel
+universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily
+blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. He would not strive
+after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we
+seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are
+transitory, and that they are not our own. He would bear evils with
+patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. He would,
+in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid
+self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. He felt
+that he owed all to God,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus
+live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only
+for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to
+greatness. And if God has given us such a priceless gift, we should be
+contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are
+doubtless for the best. We should wish, indeed, for only what God wills
+and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as
+discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part.
+
+Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
+approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
+although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
+Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
+influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
+Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
+learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
+admiration.
+
+Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
+lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
+life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
+the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
+regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
+Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
+existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
+happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
+has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
+does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
+man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
+that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
+
+We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
+systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
+marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
+marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
+discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
+philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
+time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
+have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
+unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
+circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
+glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
+mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
+never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
+human culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
+read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
+Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
+De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
+Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
+
+The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
+numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
+Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
+Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
+Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
+Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
+connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
+French Cousin should be consulted.
+
+The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
+Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
+abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
+discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
+other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
+merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
+also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
+Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
+continuation of K. O. Mueller's History of the Literature of Ancient
+Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
+Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
+Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
+Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
+
+
+
+
+SOCRATES.
+
+470-399 B.C.
+
+GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
+
+
+To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
+example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
+influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
+he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
+than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
+truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
+that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
+published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
+philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
+by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
+Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
+their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
+man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
+triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
+
+He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
+belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
+was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
+of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
+banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
+composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
+fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
+civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
+most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
+Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
+the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
+Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
+most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
+but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
+popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
+truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
+pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
+Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
+to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
+really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
+taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
+Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
+arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
+to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
+century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
+universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
+of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
+intellectual force.
+
+It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
+devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
+cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
+"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
+
+He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
+family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
+Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
+perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
+twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
+when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
+Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
+distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
+patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
+his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
+intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
+nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
+both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
+repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
+lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
+barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
+market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
+poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
+Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
+friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
+being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
+lived in "good society."
+
+The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
+Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
+never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
+acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
+he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
+even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
+everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
+
+But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
+inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
+prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
+Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
+make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
+attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
+gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
+completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
+
+His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
+to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
+to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
+shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
+before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
+one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
+asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
+over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
+process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
+wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
+professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
+intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
+more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
+no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
+what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
+poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
+since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
+cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
+have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
+even for Athens.
+
+He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
+lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
+skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
+illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
+with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
+in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
+Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
+utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
+utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
+wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
+paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
+and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
+him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
+some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
+and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
+he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
+ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
+although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
+saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
+are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
+more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
+of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
+of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
+
+And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
+sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
+every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
+at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
+to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
+chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
+and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
+they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
+then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
+carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
+not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
+most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
+(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
+long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
+indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
+abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
+control of the passions.
+
+To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
+provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
+especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
+provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
+him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
+he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
+would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
+a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
+women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
+not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
+society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
+best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
+alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
+Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
+tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
+was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
+both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
+modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
+and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
+animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
+affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
+his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
+were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
+conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
+and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
+followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
+of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
+acknowledged his marvellous power.
+
+But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
+More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
+his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
+
+In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
+subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
+revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
+theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
+the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
+were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
+in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
+nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
+mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
+philosophical system.
+
+So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
+glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
+broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
+which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
+aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
+proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
+logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
+disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
+in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
+partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
+and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
+inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
+definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
+people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
+into absurdities.
+
+Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
+philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
+demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
+what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
+arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
+courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
+positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
+inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
+relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
+certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
+Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
+pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
+research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
+
+How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
+problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
+Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
+warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
+teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
+concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
+them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
+certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
+could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
+necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
+definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
+true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
+But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
+as what his _aim_ was.
+
+The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
+and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
+rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
+called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
+very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
+inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
+deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
+in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
+all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
+earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
+of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
+motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
+universe, is convicted of ignorance.
+
+Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
+so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
+what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
+foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
+antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
+on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
+settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
+reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
+origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
+plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
+beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
+thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
+making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
+Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
+Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
+must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
+in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
+could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
+about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
+to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
+wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
+soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
+existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
+Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
+foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
+to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
+
+Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
+what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
+everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
+within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
+physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
+knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
+Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
+afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
+Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
+of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
+the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
+by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
+happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
+ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
+philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
+pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
+retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
+taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
+which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
+attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
+or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
+Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
+wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
+but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
+we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
+soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
+country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
+worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
+is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
+great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
+will expand and be happy forever.
+
+Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
+But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
+teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
+living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
+practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
+of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
+The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
+intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
+religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
+oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
+from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
+society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
+Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
+obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
+but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
+the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
+No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
+disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
+knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
+or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
+soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
+when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
+and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
+the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
+discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
+fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
+was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
+forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
+it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
+mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
+bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
+to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
+was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
+of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
+a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
+supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
+prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
+enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
+his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
+probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
+"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
+experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
+or sin.
+
+Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
+with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
+pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
+and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
+is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
+the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
+comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
+of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
+virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
+and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
+One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
+must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
+citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
+them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
+and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
+drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
+enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
+model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
+symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
+While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
+true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
+solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
+extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
+he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
+poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
+lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
+of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
+visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
+kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
+love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
+He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
+body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
+austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
+controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
+knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
+temperance, therefore, is self-control.
+
+Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
+on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
+subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
+man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
+thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
+world were blotted out."
+
+The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
+its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
+making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
+difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
+passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
+Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
+the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
+knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
+what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
+knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
+by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
+
+     "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
+Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
+but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
+an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
+with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
+them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
+and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
+Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
+of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
+recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
+everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
+Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
+personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
+such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
+beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
+wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
+reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
+believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
+Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
+forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
+called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
+Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
+consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
+people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
+to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
+future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
+and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
+Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
+gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
+representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
+and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
+imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
+existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
+degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
+or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
+the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
+understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
+teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
+sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
+
+But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
+immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
+conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
+missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
+than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
+lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
+called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
+Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
+reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
+or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
+and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
+Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
+earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
+himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
+
+Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
+man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
+wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
+previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
+morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
+disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
+himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
+wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
+dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
+the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
+gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
+him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
+this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
+Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
+than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
+searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
+force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
+this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
+present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
+What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
+pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
+cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
+friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
+Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
+and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
+arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
+ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
+_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
+any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
+pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
+shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+
+It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
+especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
+popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
+who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
+our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
+tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
+he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
+quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
+spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
+persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
+they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
+the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
+ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
+Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
+Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
+mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
+not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
+Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
+the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
+hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
+hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
+severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
+their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
+and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
+mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
+people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
+logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
+popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
+told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
+was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
+Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
+on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
+those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
+children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
+he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
+offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
+way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
+seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
+and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
+the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
+or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
+to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
+invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
+killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
+who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
+
+So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
+disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
+comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
+thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
+a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
+of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
+everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
+conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
+mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
+teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
+the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
+Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
+Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
+after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
+to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
+traitor to his country.
+
+Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
+to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
+leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
+rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
+because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
+who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
+the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
+Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
+terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
+that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
+corrupted the youth of Athens.
+
+In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
+he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
+really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
+Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
+realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
+carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
+utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
+temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
+of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
+tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
+institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
+openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
+magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
+technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
+man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
+opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
+made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
+failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
+
+Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
+able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
+wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
+no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
+passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
+Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
+children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
+His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
+without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
+defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
+them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
+might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
+(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
+irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
+privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
+have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
+amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
+Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
+a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
+
+We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
+He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
+was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
+world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
+martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
+great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
+ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
+perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
+of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
+indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
+have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
+only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
+death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
+civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
+himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
+genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
+martyrdom.
+
+So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
+interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
+lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
+escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
+hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
+he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
+prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
+died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
+
+His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
+was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
+light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
+ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
+Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
+They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
+character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
+properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
+redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
+philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
+greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
+Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
+after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
+and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
+America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
+bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
+thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
+civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
+deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
+was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
+be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
+they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
+few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
+and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
+of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
+Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
+Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
+Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
+Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
+of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
+Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
+Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
+Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
+Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
+Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
+Aristotle.
+
+
+
+
+PHIDIAS
+
+500-430 B.C.
+
+GREEK ART.
+
+
+I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
+people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
+they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
+collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
+over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-a-brac, they
+assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
+what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
+is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
+which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
+opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
+patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
+on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
+which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
+the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
+in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
+fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
+emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
+some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
+painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
+of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
+the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
+mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
+the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
+is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
+of general criticism and constant conversation.
+
+It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
+than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
+than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
+who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
+offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
+show its developments in an historical point of view.
+
+The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
+one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
+or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
+well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
+There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
+interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
+Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
+of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
+influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
+Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
+largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
+
+Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
+Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
+the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
+what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
+His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
+Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
+alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
+immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
+present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
+and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
+grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
+Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
+Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
+colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
+representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
+throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
+the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
+Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
+that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
+served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
+repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
+Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
+
+Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
+day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
+superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
+grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
+superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
+having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
+had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
+unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
+and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
+poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
+works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
+immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
+admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
+extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
+energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
+devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
+make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
+private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
+resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
+this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
+and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
+not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
+fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
+his day.
+
+But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
+Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
+especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
+in pictures.
+
+"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
+to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
+eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
+speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
+an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
+preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
+souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
+with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
+mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
+claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
+genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
+beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
+utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
+the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
+temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
+these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
+admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
+are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
+master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
+therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
+in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
+before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
+roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
+graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
+realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
+forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
+thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
+stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
+beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
+creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
+indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
+excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
+or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
+since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
+glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
+cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
+He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
+praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
+the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
+preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
+old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
+gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
+lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
+triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
+poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
+the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
+realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
+true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
+grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
+beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
+reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
+been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
+tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
+only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
+painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
+energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
+pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
+thirty-seven.
+
+The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
+Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
+were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
+man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
+conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
+architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
+civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
+of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
+nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
+they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
+they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
+excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
+still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
+of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
+right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
+influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
+artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
+the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
+purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
+Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
+details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
+Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
+angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
+century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
+In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
+independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
+circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
+its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
+race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
+people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
+rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
+by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
+
+Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
+be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
+ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
+grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
+other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
+and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
+demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
+Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
+represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
+that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
+relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
+speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
+assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
+probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
+such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
+alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
+becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
+The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
+all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
+ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
+Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
+the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
+writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
+inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
+assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
+the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
+Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
+appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
+constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
+mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
+When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
+all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
+contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
+permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
+the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
+Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
+Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
+same people.
+
+Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
+culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
+was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
+sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
+for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
+India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
+They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
+erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
+builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
+monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
+reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
+only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
+despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
+purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
+this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
+difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
+acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
+forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
+the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
+suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
+star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
+since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
+any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
+
+But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
+monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
+the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
+temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
+large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
+feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
+with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
+surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
+accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
+enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
+of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
+They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
+they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
+exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
+or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
+true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
+been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
+he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
+should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
+years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
+description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
+it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
+profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
+money rather than architectural genius.
+
+After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
+equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
+deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
+these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
+secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
+palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
+at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
+number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
+in beauty and grace.
+
+It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
+architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
+And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
+earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
+various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.
+
+The Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece, eighty
+years after the fall of Troy, were the first who added substantially to
+the architectural art of Asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and
+harmony to their temples. We see great thickness of columns, a fitting
+proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. The horizontal
+lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines
+of the columns. The temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms.
+The Doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement
+on the Egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing
+gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward,
+about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "So regular was
+the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and
+the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two
+individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a
+temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement,
+and general proportions." And yet while the style of all the Doric
+temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by
+the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of
+Grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of Gothic
+architecture. The later Doric was less massive than the earlier, but
+more rich in sculptured ornaments. The pedestal was from two thirds to a
+whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as
+it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. The pillar had
+twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the
+entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into
+architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was
+the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment
+above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. From
+the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings,
+while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing
+both men and animals. The graceful outline of the columns, and the
+variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and
+capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. All the glories of
+this order of architecture culminated in the Parthenon,--built of
+Pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with
+forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the
+base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately
+ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior
+was the statue of Minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. The
+walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself
+contained countless treasures. This unrivalled temple was not so large
+as some of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, but it covered twelve
+times the ground of the temple of Solomon, and from the summit of the
+Acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. The marbles have crumbled
+and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the
+most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the
+Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and
+Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and
+immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian
+amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or
+for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the
+severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes?
+
+The Ionic architecture is only a modification of the Doric,--its columns
+more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more
+elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment,
+the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from
+the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength.
+Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the
+Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the
+naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy
+and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of
+the capital."
+
+The Corinthian order, which was the most copied by the Romans, was still
+more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more
+decorated entablature.
+
+But the principles of all these three orders are substantially the
+same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even
+as vertical lines marked the Gothic. We see the lintel and not the arch;
+huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly
+laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light
+from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline
+uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than
+broken by projections. There is no great variety; but the harmony, the
+severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can
+never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete,
+not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no
+gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and
+spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments
+and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from
+the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of
+physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace
+of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the
+architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores,
+libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring,
+we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals,
+schools,--for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the
+world before Christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for
+the life above. Such was the temple of the Greeks, reappearing in all
+the architectures of nations, from the Romans to our own times,--so
+perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new
+principles discovered which were not known to Vitruvius. What a
+creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years,
+and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! Ah, that was a
+triumph of Art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty
+generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. But how hidden
+and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the
+littleness of man and the greatness of Art itself. How true that old
+Greek saying, "Life is short, but Art is long."
+
+But the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was
+carried to the same perfection. The Greeks did not originate sculpture.
+We read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. Assyria, Egypt,
+and India are full of relics. But these are rude, unformed, without
+grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. There are
+but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. Everything
+which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive,
+imperturbable. Nor is there a severe beauty of form. There is no grace,
+no loveliness, that we should desire them. Nature was not severely
+studied. We see no aspiration after what is ideal. Sometimes the
+sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. They are emblematic of
+strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. They are
+curious, but they do not inspire us. We do not copy them; we turn away
+from them. They do not live, and they are not reproduced. Art could
+spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. They are merely
+historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the
+degradation of the people.
+
+But this cannot be said of the statues which the Greeks created, or
+improved from ancient models. In the sculptures of the Greeks we see the
+utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by
+the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest
+beauty. A famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps
+one hundred different persons. The study of the human figure became a
+noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and
+loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all
+respects. And not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in
+marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. We see in those figures
+which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest,
+grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form.
+We see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage,
+agony, shame, joy, peace. But it is the perfection of form which is most
+wonderful and striking. Nor did the artists work to please the vulgar
+rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent
+sentiments in which the whole nation shared. They sought to instruct;
+they appealed to the highest intelligence. "Some sought to represent
+tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur."
+Grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it
+produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the
+portrait-statues of distinguished men. This art was later in its
+development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what
+had already nearly reached perfection. Thus Phidias ornamented the
+Parthenon in the time of Pericles, when sculpture was purest and most
+ideal In some points of view it declined after Phidias, but in other
+respects it continued to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who
+was contemporaneous with Alexander. He is said to have executed fifteen
+hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. He
+idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details. He
+alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost. None
+of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is
+supposed that the famous _Hercules_ and the _Torso Belvedere_ are copies
+from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules. We only can
+judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the
+criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come
+down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. It
+was his scholars who sculptured the _Colossus of Rhodes_, the _Laocooen_,
+and the _Dying Gladiator_. After him plastic art rapidly degenerated,
+since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was
+famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.
+The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was
+sought as the highest good. Skill of execution did not decline, but
+ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as
+among the Romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter
+senatorial pride.
+
+But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the
+original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding
+age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior
+respects,--in mere mechanical skill. The _Olympian Jove_ of Phidias
+lives perhaps in the _Moses_ of Michael Angelo, great as was his
+original genius, even as the _Venus_ of Praxiteles may have been
+reproduced in Powers's _Greek Slave_. The great masters had innumerable
+imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. What
+a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how
+honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!
+They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands,
+perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. Their instructions
+were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of
+the proudest features of our own civilization. It is true that
+Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties
+which prevent the eclipse of Art. In this way it comes to the rescue of
+Art when in danger of being perverted. Grecian Art was consecrated to
+Paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to
+Christianity, like music and eloquence. It will not conserve
+Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish
+without it.
+
+I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen
+in painting.
+
+It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in
+sculpture and architecture. We have no means of forming incontrovertible
+opinions. Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that
+remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring,
+do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures
+of the great masters of modern times. But we have the testimony of the
+ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of
+pictures as they were of statues. And since their taste was severe, and
+their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer
+that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the
+Greeks. We read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of
+Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples. The schools of Sicyon,
+Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern
+schools to which I have alluded.
+
+Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of
+art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. But painting is
+very ancient. The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient
+historians, were covered with paintings. Many survive amid the ruins of
+Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude,
+without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures. Nor do they
+represent passions and emotions. They aimed to perpetuate historical
+events, not ideas. The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out
+the outline of figures. Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in
+ancient vases, on a white ground. The effects of light and shade were
+then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with
+Nature. Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of
+"fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective.
+Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting
+as he was for sculpture. He was the first who painted woman with
+brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave to the cheek the
+blush and to his draperies gracefulness. He is said to have been a great
+epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet. He
+expressed, like them, ideal beauty. But his pictures had no elaborate
+grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. His figures
+were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. He took his
+subjects from epic poetry. He is celebrated for his accurate drawing,
+and for the charm and grace of his female figures. He also gave great
+grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo. Contemporary with him was
+Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled
+in painting horses.
+
+With Apollodorus of Athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth
+century before Christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic
+effect. His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the
+appearance of reality. He painted men and things as they appeared. He
+also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by
+a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what
+is called "tone." He prepared the way for Zeuxis, who surpassed him in
+the power to give beauty to forms. The _Helen_ of Zeuxis was painted
+from five of the most beautiful women of Croton. He aimed at complete
+illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape
+picture. His style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures
+of Phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. His marked
+excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. He did not paint
+ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral
+sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty
+as it appeared in the models which he used. But he was greatly extolled,
+and accumulated a great fortune, like Rubens, and lived ostentatiously,
+as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation
+of sentiment. His headquarters were not at Athens, but at Ephesus,--a
+city which also produced Parrhasins, to whom Zeuxis himself gave the
+palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while Zeuxis only
+deceived birds by his grapes. Parrhasius established the rule of
+proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. He was a very
+luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection
+of his art.
+
+But if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by Apelles,--the
+Titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the Ionian school
+with the scientific severity of the school of Sicyonia. He alone was
+permitted to paint the figure of Alexander, as Lysippus only was allowed
+to represent him in bronze. He invented ivory black, and was the first
+to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors
+and preserve them. His distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that
+artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from
+character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in
+perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste
+which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists
+could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
+criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
+fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
+self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
+of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
+Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
+talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
+I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
+certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
+grace was impersonated.
+
+After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
+artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
+there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
+vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
+enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
+brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
+Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
+possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
+making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
+expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
+painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
+statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
+portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
+palaces, as were statues.
+
+We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
+the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
+of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
+which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
+Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
+Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
+remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
+vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
+conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
+masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
+of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
+we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
+design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill,
+which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
+creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
+inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
+appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
+surpassed by the moderns.
+
+But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
+It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
+artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
+were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
+literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
+profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
+things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
+especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
+orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
+Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
+finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
+superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
+taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
+is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
+read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
+harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
+we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
+arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
+construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
+marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
+copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
+writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
+lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
+most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
+perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
+the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
+fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.
+
+It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
+conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Stael, and Macaulay, in our times.
+
+But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department of
+Art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and
+statues. An interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an
+artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their
+works are apt to perish, like those of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of Cicero which
+makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. The same may
+be said of Horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes
+him immortal. It is this singular fascination of language and style
+which keeps Hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like
+Pascal, Goldsmith, Voltaire, and Fenelon. It is on account of these
+excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose
+their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they
+have exerted their vast influence.
+
+Art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by
+the Greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races
+and ages. Artists are great exponents of civilization. They are
+generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and
+usually associating with the rich and proud. The Popes rewarded artists
+while they crushed reformers. I never read of an artist who was
+persecuted. Men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with
+them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no
+opposition and stir up no hostile passions. It is the men who propound
+agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are
+persecuted. Artists create no revolutions, not even of thought.
+Savonarola kindled a greater fire in Florence than all the artists whom
+the Medici ever patronized. But if the artists cannot wear the crown of
+apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like
+Socrates, Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Burke,--yet they have fewer evils to
+contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression
+behind them, not like that of Moses and Paul, but still an influence;
+they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas,
+and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people
+and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and
+adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments.
+The great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little
+to save the world. Art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is
+mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which
+shine beyond the grave. And yet it is a great and invaluable assistance
+to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in
+attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves.
+To the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge
+of the principles of Art is as important as to the architect, the
+sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by
+study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men.
+
+Thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments
+of Art the Greeks were the teachers of the modern European nations, as
+well of the ancient Romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to
+all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has
+been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new
+principles have been discovered which were not known to them. In
+everything which pertains to Art they were benefactors of the human
+race, and gave a great impulse to civilization.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Mueller's De Phidias Vita, Vitruvius, Aristotle. Pliny, Ovid, Martial,
+Lucian, and Cicero have made criticisms on ancient Art. The modern
+writers are very numerous, especially among the Germans and the French.
+From these may be selected Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art;
+Mueller's Remains of Ancient Art; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Sir
+W. Gill's Pompeiana; Montfancon's Antiquite Expliquee en Figures;
+Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's
+Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography
+of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians;
+Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and
+Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in Smith's
+Dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY GENIUS:
+
+
+THE GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS.
+
+
+We know but little of the literature of antiquity until the Greeks
+applied to it the principles of art. The Sanskrit language has revealed
+the ancient literature of the Hindus, which is chiefly confined to
+mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the
+chapter on "Ancient Religions." There was no history worthy the name in
+India. The Egyptians and Babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors
+and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value.
+It is true that the literary remains of Egypt show a reading and writing
+people as early as three thousand years before Christ, and in their
+various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of
+departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of
+ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of
+fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. The difficulties of
+deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms
+of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological
+than of literary interest. The Chinese annals also extend back to a
+remote period, for Confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but
+Chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also
+that of all Oriental nations, except the Hindu Vedas and the Persian
+Zend-Avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the
+imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos.
+
+Accordingly, as I wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius
+when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a
+direct influence upon our modern literature, I confine myself to that of
+Greece and Rome. Even our present civilization delights in the
+masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists,
+and seeks to rival them. Long before Christianity became a power the
+great literary artists of Greece had reached perfection in style and
+language, especially in Athens, to which city youths were sent to be
+educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was
+known. Educated Romans were as familiar with the Greek classics as they
+were with those of their own country, and could talk Greek as the modern
+cultivated Germans talk French. Without the aid of Greece, Rome could
+never have reached the civilization to which she attained.
+
+How rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the Greek
+or Latin language! In all those qualities which give immortality
+classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in
+passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. It
+existed from the early times of Greek civilization, and continued to
+within a brief period of the fall of the Roman empire. With the rich
+accumulation of ages the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed
+of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the Nature-myths of the
+ante-Homeric singers; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with
+their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character,
+their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their
+good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of
+almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be
+found in them.
+
+We see in Homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in
+literature that Plato holds in philosophy or Newton in science, and
+exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him.
+He was born, probably, at Smyrna, an Ionian city; the dates attributed
+to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before Christ.
+Herodotus puts him at 850 B.C. For nearly three thousand years his
+immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of
+genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the Athenians,
+since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated
+sentiments of the heroic ages. We find in them no pomp of words, no
+far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious
+speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs
+of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world,
+the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is;
+and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with
+singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. We find in the
+Homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur,
+sentiment, and beauty, such as Phidias represented in his statues of
+Zeus. No poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted
+greater admiration from critics. Like Shakspeare, Homer is a kind of
+Bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages,
+--one of the prodigies of the world. His poems form the basis of Greek
+literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of
+all Grecian compositions. The unconscious simplicity of the Homeric
+narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details,
+and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of
+genius can claim. Moreover it presents a painting of society, with its
+simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and
+its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. Its influence on the
+popular mythology of the Greeks has been already alluded to. If Homer
+did not create the Grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it.
+Nor is it necessary to speak of any other Grecian epic, when the Iliad
+and the Odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and
+twenty years before Hesiod was born. Grote thinks that the Iliad and the
+Odyssey were produced at some period between 850 B.C. and 776 B.C.
+
+In lyrical poetry the Greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they
+attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the
+intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful
+elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. Who has surpassed Pindar
+in artistic skill? His triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks
+out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments
+of moral wisdom. They alone of all his writings have descended to us,
+but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and
+panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. He was so
+celebrated that he was employed by the different States and princes of
+Greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the
+public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation
+by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes
+522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary
+with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of
+Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the
+lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the
+richest collection that the world has produced.
+
+Greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. Even the
+great masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides now extant were regarded
+by their contemporaries as inferior to many other Greek tragedies
+utterly unknown to us. The great creator of the Greek drama was
+Aeschylus, born at Eleusis 525 B.C. It was not till the age of forty-one
+that he gained his first prize. Sixteen years afterward, defeated by
+Sophocles, he quitted Athens in disgust and went to the court of Hiero,
+king of Syracuse. But he was always held, even at Athens, in the highest
+honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. It was
+not so much the object of Aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct
+and elevate it. He combined religious feeling with lofty moral
+sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and
+terror. "At his summons," says Sir Walter Scott, "the mysterious and
+tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods
+and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled
+spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed
+heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities
+descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and
+yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who
+struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the
+loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure
+and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent
+passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. In sublimity Aeschylus
+has never been surpassed. He was in poetry what Phidias and Michael
+Angelo were in art. The critics say that his sublimity of diction is
+sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated.
+His characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and
+heroes of colossal magnitude. His religious views were Homeric, and he
+sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of
+the generals who fought at Marathon to do. He was an unconscious genius,
+and worked like Homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. He was proud
+and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote
+seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal,
+among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of
+Shakspeare. He died in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
+
+The fame of Sophocles is scarcely less than that of Aeschylus. He was
+twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. He was
+born in Colonus, in the suburbs of Athens, 495 B.C., and was the
+contemporary of Herodotus, of Pericles, of Pindar, of Phidias, of
+Socrates, of Cimon, of Euripides,--the era of great men, the period of
+the Peloponnesian War, when everything that was elegant and intellectual
+culminated at Athens. Sophocles had every element of character and
+person to fascinate the Greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form,
+skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and
+amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of
+genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to
+his country. His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best
+critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover
+maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted,
+in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of
+Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint
+forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so
+religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but
+more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable
+destiny, but of their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart
+from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most
+beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at
+Colonus." Sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and
+thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His
+"Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had
+already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but
+these are priceless treasures.
+
+Euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the Greek tragic poets,
+was born at Athens, 485 B.C. He had not the sublimity of Aeschylus, nor
+the touching pathos of Sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either,
+but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to
+both. In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not
+breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus
+and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He
+paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects
+to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was
+pantheistic in his views. He does not attempt to show ideal excellence,
+and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they
+are, especially in corrupt states of society. Euripides wrote
+ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. Whatever objection may
+be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question
+their transcendent art or their great originality.
+
+With the exception of Shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied
+the three great Greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially
+Racine, who took Sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets
+of all ages have been indebted to Homer.
+
+The Greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. Both
+tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of Bacchus; and as the
+jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave
+scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose.
+At first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at
+the foundation of the Greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the
+adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in
+describing the appetite of Hercules or the cowardice of Bacchus. The
+comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by
+the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. But the taste of the
+Athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy
+passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the
+day. The people loved to see their great men brought down to their own
+level. Comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society
+were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon
+wherewith to assail prevailing follies. In modern times, comedy reached
+its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the
+most intellectual,--as in France, when Moliere pointed his envenomed
+shafts against popular vices. In Greece it flourished in the age of
+Socrates and the Sophists, when there was great bitterness in political
+parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. Comedy first made
+itself felt as a great power in Cratinus, who espoused the side of Cimon
+against Pericles with great bitterness and vehemence.
+
+Many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but
+all yielded precedence to Aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays
+have reached us. Never were libels on persons of authority and influence
+uttered with such terrible license. He attacked the gods, the
+politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of Athens; even private
+citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of
+his irony. Socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered,
+Cleon in the height of his power, and Euripides when he had gained the
+highest prizes. Aristophanes has furnished jests for Rabelais, hints to
+Swift, and humor for Moliere. In satire, in derision, in invective, and
+bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. No modern capital would
+tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever
+more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be
+reached. Aristophanes is called the Father of Comedy, and his comedies
+are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are
+doubtless caricatures. He was patriotic in his intentions, even setting
+up as a reformer. His peculiar genius shines out in his "Clouds," the
+greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the Sophists. He wrote
+fifty-four plays. He was born 444 B.C., and died 380 B.C.
+
+Thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the
+epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old Greeks were great masters,
+and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages.
+
+The Romans in these departments were not the equals of the Greeks, but
+they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern
+nations. If the Romans did not produce a Homer, they can boast of a
+Virgil; if they had no Pindar, they furnished a Horace; and in satire
+they transcended the Greeks.
+
+The Romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the Greek language
+and literature were introduced among them. It was not till the fall of
+Tarentum that we read of a Roman poet. Livius Andronicus, a Greek
+slave, 240 B.C., rudely translated the Odyssey into Latin, and was the
+author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which,
+according to Cicero, were worth a second perusal. Still, Andronicus was
+the first to substitute the Greek drama for the old lyrical stage
+poetry. One year after the first Punic War, he exhibited the first Roman
+play. As the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though
+he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was,
+pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the Greeks. His plays
+formed the commencement of Roman translation-literature, and naturalized
+the Greek metres in Latium, even though they were curiosities rather
+than works of art.
+
+Naevius, 235 B.C., produced a play at Rome, and wrote both epic and
+dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be
+formed of his merits. He was banished for his invectives against the
+aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. Mommsen regards
+Naevius as the first of the Romans who deserves to be ranked among the
+poets. His language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his
+verses had a graceful flow. In metres he closely adhered to Andronicus.
+
+Plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the Romans
+produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original
+and fresh. He was born in Umbria, 257 B.C., and was contemporaneous
+with Publius and Cneius Scipio. He died 184 B.C. The first development
+of Roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic,
+in which still the Greek authors were copied. Plautus might be mistaken
+for a Greek, were it not for the painting of Roman manners, for his garb
+is essentially Greek. Plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not
+always for the stage, but for the reading public. He lived about the
+time of the second Punic War, before the theatre was fairly established
+at Rome. His characters, although founded on Greek models, act, speak,
+and joke like Romans. He enjoyed great popularity down to the latest
+times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the
+felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. Cicero
+places his wit on a par with the old Attic comedy; while Jerome spent
+much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him
+tears of bitter regret. Modern dramatists owe much to Plautus. Moliere
+has imitated him in his "Avare," and Shakspeare in his "Comedy of
+Errors." Lessing pronounces the "Captivi" to be the finest comedy ever
+brought upon the stage; he translated this play into German, and it has
+also been admirably translated into English. The great excellence of
+Plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the
+parts for dramatic effect. His humor, broad and fresh, produced
+irresistible comic effects. No one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary
+of nicknames and his happy jokes. Hence he maintained his popularity in
+spite of his vulgarity.
+
+Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a
+Carthaginian slave, born 185 B.C., but was educated by a wealthy Roman
+into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best
+society and travelled extensively in Greece. He was greatly inferior to
+Plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence;
+but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which
+have been translated into all modern languages. Terence, whom Mommsen
+regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of
+the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he
+drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral,
+were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few;
+Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence
+confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for
+which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics.
+He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause
+of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted
+the more original productions of Plautus in the later years of the
+republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more
+prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age.
+
+The "Thyestes" of Varius was regarded in its day as equal to Greek
+tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was
+regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most
+of his works have perished. Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and
+was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The
+Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus
+in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no
+tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of
+Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the
+Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written
+by Seneca the philosopher.
+
+In epic poetry the Romans accomplished more, though even here they are
+still inferior to the Greeks. The Aeneid of Virgil has certainly
+survived the material glories of Rome. It may not have come up to the
+exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries;
+it may not have the force and originality of the Iliad,--but it is
+superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy
+than can be found in any Greek author. In soundness of judgment, in
+tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description,
+in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in
+splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in
+any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works
+of genius. Henry Thompson, in his "History of Roman Literature," says:--
+
+"Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Roman people, the
+poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'Eternal City' to those
+heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and
+ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with
+persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character
+to awaken their admiration and awe. No subject could have been more
+happily chosen. It has been admired also for its perfect unity of
+action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of
+description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem,
+which is to impress the divine authority under which Aeneas first
+settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of Aeneas
+seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of
+Dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present
+world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more
+effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the
+Trojan name is to be continued in the Roman, and thus heaven and earth
+are appeased."
+
+Probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence
+as this poem of Virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of
+learning, the model of the Carlovingian poets, the guide of Dante, the
+oracle of Tasso. Virgil was born seventy years before Christ, and was
+seven years older than Augustus. His parentage was humble, but his
+facilities of education were great. He was a most fortunate man,
+enjoying the friendship of Augustus and Maecenas, fame in his own
+lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his
+labors. He died at Brundusium at the age of fifty.
+
+In lyrical poetry, the Romans can boast of one of the greatest masters
+of any age or nation. The Odes of Horace have never been transcended,
+and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. They
+may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and
+passion which belong to the Greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of
+exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are
+unrivalled. Even in the time of Juvenal his poems were the common
+school-books of Roman youth. Horace, born 65 B.C., like Virgil was also
+a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing
+ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust
+at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires.
+His Odes composed but a small part of his writings. His Epistles are the
+most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "Georgics" of Virgil
+and the "Satires" of Juvenal as the most perfect form of Roman verse.
+His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and
+lofty indignation that characterized those of Juvenal. It is the folly
+rather than the wickedness of vice which Horace describes with such
+playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to
+mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures. Quintilian's
+criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_Lyricorum Horatius fere solus
+legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. No poetry was ever more
+severely elaborated than that of Horace, and the melody of the language
+imparts to it a peculiar fascination. If inferior to Pindar in passion
+and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit.
+It cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of
+life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober
+enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the
+masters of human thought.
+
+It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as
+well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so
+much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one
+another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add
+to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. Even
+Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to
+those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of
+minute observers.
+
+In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus,
+unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era.
+He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated
+characters. One hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us,
+most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness
+and sensuality. Critics say, however, that whatever he touched he
+adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective,
+and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the
+Latin language.
+
+In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by
+Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius. He was born 95
+B.C., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. His principal
+poem "De Rerum Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and
+treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was
+conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and
+subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a
+lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the
+great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of
+Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill
+in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of
+poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. Into all subjects he
+casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. But he was
+not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so
+fully brought out the power of the Latin language. Professor Ramsay,
+while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, the exquisite
+ingenuity of Ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the
+gentleness and splendor of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of
+Juvenal, thinks that had the verse of Lucretius perished we should never
+have known that the Latin could give utterance to the grandest
+conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell
+in which the Grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. The
+eulogium of Ovid is--
+
+     "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,
+      Exitio terras quum dabit una dies."
+
+Elegiac poetry has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this
+school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a
+doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the
+Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends
+involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production.
+He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his
+poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a
+prediction, says Bayle, which has not yet proved false. Niebuhr thinks
+that Ovid next to Catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen.
+Milton thinks he might have surpassed Virgil, had he attempted epic
+poetry. He was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical
+authors; and Chaucer, Ariosto, and Spenser owe to him great obligations.
+Like Pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. His "Tristia" were more
+highly praised than his "Amores" or his "Metamorphoses," a fact which
+shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit.
+His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste
+which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great
+advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of
+licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished
+like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart.
+But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from
+the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society.
+Chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. Ovid, as an immoral writer, was
+justly punished.
+
+Tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as Ovid,
+and was the friend of the poet Horace. He lived in retirement, and was
+both gentle and amiable. At his beautiful country-seat he soothed his
+soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the
+country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but
+Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his
+unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of
+three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though
+it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
+He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the
+glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing
+despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country."
+
+Propertius, the contemporary of Tibullus, born 51 B.C., was on the
+contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of Augustus,--a man of wit
+and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was Cynthia, a poetess and a
+courtesan. He was an imitator of the Greeks, but had a great
+contemporary fame. He showed much warmth of passion, but never soared
+into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival.
+
+Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, who were generally
+devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English
+poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to
+such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, Wordsworth and
+Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled
+the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in
+imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed
+rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
+
+In satire the Romans transcended both the Greeks and the moderns. Satire
+arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when
+freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain
+immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the
+friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices
+of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign
+of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly
+set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction
+all who departed from duty and conscience. There is nothing in any
+language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of
+Juvenal, not even the invectives of Swift and Pope. But he flourished
+during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the
+elegance of the Augustan writers. He was born 60 A.D., the son of a
+freedman, and was the contemporary of Martial. He was banished by
+Domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under
+the reign of Nerva he returned to Rome, and the imperial tyranny was the
+subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public
+morals. His great rival in satire was Horace, who laughed at follies;
+but Juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. His sarcasms
+on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope
+that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a
+delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even
+like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and
+easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices
+which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for
+violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants;
+on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on
+the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and
+urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus.
+
+I might speak of other celebrated poets,--of Lucan, of Martial, of
+Petronius; but I only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity,
+both Greek and Roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and
+in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by
+appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which
+was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the
+realm of thought and art.
+
+The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as
+in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. The poets were
+the great creators of the languages of antiquity. It was not until they
+had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently
+softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. But prose
+requires art as well as poetry. There is an artistic rhythm in the
+writings of the classical authors--like those of Cicero, Herodotus, and
+Thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of Homer and Virgil.
+Plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as Apollo's
+lyre." Burke and Macaulay are as great artists in style as Tennyson
+himself. And it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times,
+have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although
+Voltaire, Schiller, Milton, Swift, and Scott are among the exceptions.
+Cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only
+a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries.
+Bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and
+command of language, could not write poetry any easier than Pope could
+write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no
+great reputation, that Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays.
+
+All sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both
+Greeks and Romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory,
+in epistles.
+
+The earliest great prose writer among the Greeks was Herodotus, 484
+B.C., from which we may infer that History was the first form of prose
+composition to attain development. But Herodotus was not born until
+Aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred
+years after Simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six
+hundred years after Homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two
+thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this
+great "Father of History" is admired by every critic, while his history
+as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to
+understand why no work in prose anterior to Herodotus is worthy of note,
+since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years
+before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of
+development under Homer for more than five hundred years. The History of
+Herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was
+enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age,
+and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various
+countries he had visited. It pertains chiefly to the wars of the Greeks
+with the Persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the
+unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the
+Oriental nations. It was once the fashion to speak of Herodotus as a
+credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting
+stories. But now it is believed that no historian was ever more
+profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations
+confirm his sagacity and impartiality. He was one of the most
+accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and
+curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge,
+familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his
+day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of
+Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of
+Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of
+Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of
+Lysias, of Aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of
+genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian
+city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were
+inferior to him in knowledge. Thus was he fitted for his task by travel,
+by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his
+original genius. The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in
+Greece was produced by Herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste,
+perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in
+spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected,
+and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet
+instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries
+of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. So highly was
+this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at
+the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents
+(about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. He even went from city
+to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting
+his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt,
+having mastered everything. And he wrote, not for fame, but to
+communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for
+knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at
+Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even
+travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy,
+and the islands of the sea. His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an
+historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended
+to us from antiquity. Herodotus was the first to give dignity to
+history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been
+surpassed. His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent
+art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. The
+translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is
+invaluable.
+
+To Thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud
+pre-eminence. He was born 471 B.C., and lived twenty years in exile on
+account of a military failure. He treated only of a short period, during
+the Peloponnesian War; but the various facts connected with that great
+event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. He
+devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and
+weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. His style has not
+the fascination of Herodotus, but it is more concise. In a single volume
+Thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes
+of a modern history. As a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. In
+his description of the plague of Athens this writer is as minute as he
+is simple. He abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen
+perception of human character. His pictures are striking and tragic. He
+is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some
+of his sentences are not always easily understood. One of the greatest
+tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic,
+George Long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and
+eventful period by Thucydides than we have of any period in modern
+history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into
+a volume.
+
+Xenophon is the last of the trio of the Greek historians whose writings
+are classic and inimitable. He was born probably about 444 B.C. He is
+characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. His
+"Anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger Cyrus
+and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But
+his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although
+still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no
+value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories
+of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety
+of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the
+most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing
+to Xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man.
+
+If we pass from the Greek to the Latin historians,--to those who were as
+famous as the Greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in
+our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of
+Sallust, of Caesar, of Livy, of Tacitus rise up before us, together with
+a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since
+we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this
+great department of prose composition. The first great masters of the
+Greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by
+the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that
+the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it
+flexibility and refinement The first great prose writers of Rome were
+the orators; nor was the Latin language fully developed and polished
+until Cicero appeared. But we do not here write a history of the
+language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various
+departments of learning.
+
+As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already
+formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans
+for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius
+flourished. The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of
+Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M.
+Portius Cato, and L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are
+mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or
+antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim
+as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in
+genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to
+distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his
+profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of
+Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,--one of the most
+profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small
+portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show
+peculiar merit. He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal
+the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. The style of
+Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and
+lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history,
+Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. He was a
+party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but
+exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and
+honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted
+_strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. He was not comprehensive
+like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected
+philosophy as he did morality. He was the first who deviated from the
+strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical
+declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. He wrote
+for _eclat_.
+
+Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than
+Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin. Yet his historical works,
+however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius
+of the most august name of antiquity. He was mathematician, architect,
+poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. In
+eloquence he was second only to Cicero. The great value of Caesar's
+history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the
+customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. His
+observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the
+construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the
+description of his military career is only a studied apology for his
+crimes,--even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his
+victories in the most favorable light. Caesar's fame rests on his
+victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an
+historian,--even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds
+rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. Caesar's
+"Commentaries" resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other
+Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected,
+precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.
+
+The Augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of
+poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated
+themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was
+unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. Of
+the historians of that age, Livy, born 59 B.C., is the only one whose
+writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history.
+He was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary
+reputation,--so great that a Spaniard travelled from Cadiz on purpose to
+see him. Most of the great historians of the world have occupied places
+of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary
+successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high
+social position and ample means secure. Herodotus lived in courts;
+Thucydides was a great general, as also was Xenophon; Caesar was the
+first man of his times; Sallust was praetor and governor; Livy was tutor
+to Claudius; Tacitus was praetor and consul; Eusebius was bishop and
+favorite of Constantine; Ammianus was the friend of the Emperor Julian;
+Gregory of Tours was one of the leading prelates of the West; Froissart
+attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his
+day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of
+William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon,
+Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr,
+Mueller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all
+been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious
+historian who has been poor and neglected.
+
+The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion
+not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. But his
+narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. He did not sift
+evidence like Grote, nor generalize like Gibbon; but like Voltaire and
+Macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. His
+Annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from
+the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., of which only
+thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the
+vandalism of the Middle Ages and the ignorance of the monks who could
+not preserve so great a treasure. "His story flows in a calm, clear,
+sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give."
+He delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are
+noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences.
+Livy was not a critical historian like Herodotus, for he took his
+materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write
+with the exalted ideal of Thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful
+forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in
+the history of literature. Moreover, he was honest and sound in heart,
+and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was
+conversant.
+
+In the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is
+assigned to Tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his
+superior in any age or country. He was born 57 A.D., about forty-three
+years after the death of Augustus. He belonged to the equestrian rank,
+and was a man of consular dignity. He had every facility for literary
+labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give,
+and lived under a reign when truth might be told. The extant works of
+this great writer are the "Life of Agricola," his father-in-law; his
+"Annales," which begin with the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., and close
+with the death of Nero, 68 A.D.; the "Historiae," which comprise the
+period from the second consulate of Galba, 68 A.D., to the death of
+Domitian; and a treatise on the Germans. His histories describe Rome in
+the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme
+law of the empire. He also wrote of events that occurred when liberty
+had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He
+describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to
+lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself.
+He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early
+emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great
+characters he describes. No ancient writer shows greater moral dignity
+and integrity of purpose than Tacitus. In point of artistic unity he is
+superior to Livy and equal to Thucydides, whom he resembles in
+conciseness of style. His distinguishing excellence as an historian is
+his sagacity and impartiality. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and
+he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the
+prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who
+were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. But the
+writings of Tacitus were not so popular as those of Livy, since neither
+princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral
+elevation. He does not satisfy Dr. Arnold, who thinks he ought to have
+been better versed in the history of the Jews, and who dislikes his
+speeches because they were fictitious.
+
+Neither the Latin nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics
+who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate
+importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths
+of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to
+the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own
+age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know
+that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or
+less so than Pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his
+usurpation. A great history must have other merits besides accuracy,
+antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. It must
+be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to
+grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and
+poetry and beauty. A dry history, however learned, will never be read;
+it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or Mosheim's "Commentaries."
+We require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the
+writings of Livy and Tacitus will be perpetuated. Voltaire and Schiller
+have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "Life of
+Charles XII." and the "Thirty Years' War" are still classics. Neander
+has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern
+times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may
+pass away like the voluminous writings of Varro, the most learned of the
+Romans. It is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge,
+nor even the thoughts. What keeps alive the "Provincial Letters" of
+Pascal? It is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them.
+The exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and
+force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and
+interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "Arabian Nights"
+or Froissart's "Chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to
+the classic authors. We will not let them perish, because they amuse and
+interest and inspire us.
+
+A remarkable example is that of Plutarch, who, although born a Greek and
+writing in the Greek language, was a contemporary of Tacitus, lived long
+in Rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. A teacher
+of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as
+archon and priest of Apollo in his native town. His most famous work is
+his "Parallel Lives" of forty-six historic Greeks and Romans, arranged
+in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of
+anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of
+characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of
+good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day
+regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography.
+
+But it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the
+same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all Christians belong
+to the same sect. Some will be remarkable for style, others for
+learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will
+be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of
+facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some
+will make essays, and others chronicles. We have need of all styles and
+all kinds of excellence. A great and original thinker may not have the
+time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of
+original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously
+established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from
+them for the benefit of his readers. History is a boundless field of
+inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. It
+will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art
+of generalization. If an historian attempts to embody too much learning,
+he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything,
+he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.
+Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and
+styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for
+old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to
+instruct. If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold's
+views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.
+The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were
+valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. The
+ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of
+learning paraded in foot-notes.
+
+Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin,
+have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that
+are most to be admired. They were not pedants, but men of immense genius
+and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral
+wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular
+among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the
+language in which they wrote.
+
+Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have
+belonged to the Ciceronian epoch. Suetonius, born about the year 70
+A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an
+historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. His "Lives of
+the Caesars," like Diogenes Laertius's "Lives of the Philosophers," are
+rather anecdotical than historical. L. Anneus Florus, who flourished
+during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the
+different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus. Frontinus
+epitomized the large histories of Pompeius. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a
+history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon. But none
+wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except
+Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and
+Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any
+nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. It is true, we have not a
+rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe
+that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of
+public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and
+munificently rewarded. It began with democratic institutions, and
+flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it
+declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. Eloquence and liberty
+flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom
+of debate. In the fifth century before Christ--the first century of
+democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the
+opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an
+ascendent position. Socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a
+general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. In Athens
+the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend
+themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained
+in the use of public speaking. Thus arose the lawyers, among whom
+eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other
+class. Rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in Greece, Sicily,
+and Italy both were extensively cultivated. Empedocles was distinguished
+as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. It was not, however, in the
+courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion,
+but in political assemblies. These could only coexist with liberty; for
+a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of
+citizens. In the Grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to
+have been born. It was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the
+strife of parties. It arose from appeals to the people as a source of
+power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly
+popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it
+addressed interests.
+
+It was in Athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic
+institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient
+world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. Pericles, the
+greatest statesman of Greece, 495 B.C., was celebrated for his
+eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. It was conceded by the
+ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the
+epithet of "Olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of Zeus
+upon his tongue. His voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and
+rapid. Peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a
+usurper and a tyrant. Isocrates, 436 B.C., was a professed rhetorician,
+and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue
+it from the influence of the Sophists. He was the great teacher of the
+most eminent statesmen of his day. Twenty-one of his orations have come
+down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they
+were written to be read, they were not extemporary. His language is the
+purest and most refined Attic dialect. Lysias, 458 B.C., was a fertile
+writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as
+four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant.
+They are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did
+not interfere with strength. So able were these orations that only two
+were unsuccessful. They were so pure that they were regarded as the best
+canon of the Attic idiom.
+
+But all the orators of Greece--and Greece was the land of orators--gave
+way to Demosthenes, born 385 B.C. He received a good education, and is
+said to have been instructed in philosophy by Plato and in eloquence by
+Isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself
+for his brilliant career. As soon as he attained his majority, he
+brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his
+guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was
+successful, conducting the prosecution himself. It was not until the age
+of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on
+political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and
+became one of the leading statesmen of Athens. Henceforth he took an
+active part in every question that concerned the State. He especially
+distinguished himself in his speeches against Macedonian
+aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of
+his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the
+battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece,
+and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe
+Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded
+to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his
+countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the
+Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes was
+again accused, and suffered exile. Recalled from exile on the death of
+Alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of Greece, without
+success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third
+year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his
+country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his
+private life.
+
+As an orator Demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of
+any country. By his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this
+respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical
+difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly
+discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest
+commendation. He never spoke without preparation, and most of his
+orations were severely elaborated. He never trusted to the impulse of
+the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than
+Daniel Webster, who said there is no such thing. All the orations of
+Demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the
+loftiest sentiments. He was a great artist, and his oratorical
+successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the
+application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. Added to
+this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his
+language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic,
+strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet
+pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which
+altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." His orations were
+most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries
+on them, most of which are lost. Sixty of the great productions of his
+genius have come down to us.
+
+Demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of
+speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he
+pronounced in great political emergencies. His rival was Aeschines, who
+was vastly inferior to Demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and
+brilliant. Indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have
+been unanimous in ascribing to Demosthenes the highest position as an
+orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. David Hume says of
+him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible
+over a modern audience." Says Lord Brougham, "It is rapid harmony
+exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any
+appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a
+continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his
+orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to
+perfection."
+
+It is probable that the Romans were behind the Athenians in all the arts
+of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose
+among the lawyers and politicians. It was in forensic eloquence that
+Latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was
+to the Romans what libraries are to us. The art of public speaking in
+Rome was early developed. Cato, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi are said
+to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by
+Antonius, Crassus, Cotta, Sulpitius, and Hortensius. The last had a very
+brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be
+read. Caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its
+characteristics being force and purity. "Coelius was noted for lofty
+sentiment, Brutus for philosophical wisdom, Calidius for a delicate and
+harmonious style, and Calvus for sententious force."
+
+But all the Roman orators yielded to Cicero, as the Greeks did to
+Demosthenes. These two men are always coupled together when allusion is
+made to eloquence. They were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have
+never been equalled in the modern.
+
+Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in
+vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away
+before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in
+learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very
+early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the
+prosecution of Verres for corruption. Although Verres was defended by
+Hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the Metelli and other
+powerful families, Cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than Burke
+in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who also was sustained by
+powerful interests and families. The speech on the Manilian Law, when
+Cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his
+popularity. I need not describe his memorable career,--his successive
+elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of
+Catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious
+partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a
+statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his
+splendid services to the State, his greatness and his defects, his
+virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. These are foreign to
+my purpose. No man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no
+man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. His life and labors
+are immortal. His virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the
+world. Few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of
+its departments. Next to Aristotle and Varro, Cicero was the most
+learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either,
+since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a
+statesman, being the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and
+Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the
+philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of
+Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even
+civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his
+hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized
+history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the
+Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the
+various speculations. He may not have added to philosophy, but no Roman
+after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various
+systems. His glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius
+that he rose to his exalted position and influence.
+
+But it was in forensic eloquence that Cicero was pre-eminent, in which
+he had but one equal in ancient times. Roman eloquence culminated in
+him. He composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are
+preserved. Some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some
+in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as
+those of Demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all
+were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in
+philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism.
+Francis W. Newman, in his "Regal Rome," thus describes Cicero's
+eloquence:--
+
+"He goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines
+it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts
+it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels
+ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so
+strictly argumentative. And having established his case, he opens upon
+his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that
+it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or,
+when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the
+bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion."
+
+Critics have uniformly admired Cicero's style as peculiarly suited to
+the Latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more
+redundancy than the Greek. The simplicity of the Attic writers would
+make Latin composition bald and tame. To be perspicuous, the Latin must
+be full. Thus Arnold thinks that what Tacitus gained in energy he lost
+in elegance and perspicuity. But Cicero, dealing with a barren and
+unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and
+metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus
+became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. He was a
+great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he
+had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and
+not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he
+was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the
+times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs;
+nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political
+questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in
+his political discourses that Cicero rises to the highest ranks. In his
+speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony he kindles in his
+countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence
+of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and
+strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow.
+
+Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious
+examples, never even equalled. Still, we cannot tell the comparative
+merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more
+distinguished of our times; indeed only Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Burke,
+Brougham, Webster, and Clay can even be compared with them. In power of
+moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be
+mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame
+when read.
+
+In philosophy the Greeks and Romans distinguished themselves more even
+than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. Their speculations pertained
+to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. But this
+great department has already been presented. There were respectable
+writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great
+names whose writings have descended to us. Contemporaries had an exalted
+opinion of Varro, who was considered the most learned of the Romans, as
+well as their most voluminous author. He was born ten years before
+Cicero, and is highly commended by Augustine. He was entirely devoted to
+literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old
+age. Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders
+how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he
+found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of
+these only one has descended to us entire,--"De Re Rustica," written at
+the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from
+antiquity on ancient agriculture. We have parts of his other books, and
+we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their
+information would be invaluable, especially his "Divine Antiquities," in
+sixteen books,--his great work, from which Saint Augustine drew
+materials for his "City of God." Varro wrote treatises on language, on
+the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects;
+he also wrote satire and criticism. But although his writings were
+learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him.
+The truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences.
+No man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. Style is to
+written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. The multitude
+do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words,
+being repelled or attracted by _manner_.
+
+Seneca was another great writer among the Romans, but he belongs to the
+domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given
+him immortality,--as may be truly said of Socrates and Epictetus,
+although they are usually classed among the philosophers. Seneca was a
+Spaniard, born but a few years before the Christian era; he was a lawyer
+and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of Nero. It was his
+misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever
+scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in
+four years one of the largest fortunes in Rome while serving such a
+master; but since he lived to experience Nero's ingratitude, Seneca is
+more commonly regarded as a martyr. Had he lived in the republican
+period, he would have been a great orator. He wrote voluminously, on
+many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. He rejected the
+superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion
+as a mere fashion. In his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote
+fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance
+with the vices of others. He saw much of life, and died at fifty-three.
+What is remarkable in Seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is
+that under Pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have
+presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost
+transcendent talent that he should, unaided by Christianity, have soared
+so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. Nor is it easy to find any
+modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way.
+
+Quintilian is a Latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians.
+He should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like Lysias the
+Greek, Quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. He
+was born 40 A.D., and taught the younger Pliny, also two nephews of
+Domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. His
+great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "Institutiones Oratoriae"
+is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever
+written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is
+inferior to the "De Oratore" of Cicero. It is very practical and
+sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful
+in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. In
+systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by Aristotle;
+but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination,
+showing great reading and reflection. Quintilian should be viewed as a
+critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits
+and defects of the great masters of Greek and Roman literature. In his
+peculiar province he has had no superior. Like Cicero or Demosthenes or
+Plato or Thucydides or Tacitus, Quintilian would be a great man if he
+lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to
+produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking.
+
+There were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not
+represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be
+compared with the modern. I can only draw attention to Lucian,--a witty
+and voluminous Greek author, who lived in the reign of Commodus, and who
+wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances
+which have given hints to modern authors. His fame rests on his
+"Dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion,
+and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient
+satire and mockery. His style of dialogue--a combination of Plato and
+Aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind
+of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a
+writer of comedy, like Moliere. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more
+than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent
+jokes, and pungent sarcasms. Like Juvenal, Lucian paints the vices and
+follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high
+places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by
+Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his
+humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but
+contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in
+his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral
+teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates; but
+he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all
+the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm he may be compared with
+Voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down
+without substituting anything instead. His scepticism was universal, and
+extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and
+ancient. His purity of style was admired by Erasmus, and his works have
+been translated into most European languages. In strong contrast to the
+"Dialogues" of Lucian is the "City of God" by Saint Augustine, in which
+he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but
+substitutes instead the knowledge of the true God.
+
+Thus the Romans, as well as Greeks, produced works in all departments of
+literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern
+times. And where would have been the literature of the early Church, or
+of the age of the Reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great
+original writers of Athens and Rome been our school-masters? When we
+further remember that their glorious literature was created by native
+genius, without the aid of Christianity, we are filled with amazement,
+and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. Nor, indeed,
+have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our Christian
+times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced
+by Christian ideas. Some of the proudest trophies of genius have been
+won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. Witness Voltaire,
+Rousseau, Diderot, Hegel, Fichte, Gibbon, Hume, Buckle. May there not be
+the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and
+native reach of thought? Milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence
+to Satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty
+of Heaven. A great genius may be kindled even by the fires of
+discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties
+while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the
+homes and hopes of man.
+
+Since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish
+under Pagan influences, it seems certain that Christianity has a higher
+mission than the culture of the mind. Religious scepticism cannot be
+disarmed if we appeal to Christianity as the test of intellectual
+culture. The realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are
+adorned by Pagan achievements.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+There are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves,
+and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of
+ancient literature. Modern historians of Roman literature are merely
+critics, like Dalhmann, Schlegel, Niebuhr, Muller, Mommsen, Mure,
+Arnold, Dunlap, and Thompson. Nor do I know of an exhaustive history of
+Roman literature in the English language; yet nearly every great writer
+has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to
+respect. The Germans, in this department, have no equals.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME I***
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