CHAP. I. PHILOSOPHY A SUBSTITUTE FOR RELIGION. 33

the local and public Mysteries, particularly the greatest of all, the Eleusinian, were pure and undefiled by licentiousness, and, if they retained any of the obscene symbols, disguised or kept them in the back ground; the private and moveable mysteries, which, under the conduct of vagabond priests, were continually flowing in from the East, displayed those symbols in unblushing nakedness, and gave occasion for the utmost licence and impurity." II. Philosophy as a substitute for religion was stil.

more manifestly deficient. For, in the first Philosophy. place, it was unable, or condescended not, to

reach the body of the people, whom the progress of civilisation was slowly bringing up towards the common level; and where it found or sought proselytes, it spoke without authority, and distracted with the multitude of its conflicting sects the patient but bewildered inquirer. Philosophy maintained the aristocratic tone, which, while it declared that to a few elect spirits alone it was possible to communicate the highest secrets of knowledge, more particularly the mystery of the great Supreme Being, proclaimed it vain and unwise to attempt to elevate the many to such exalted speculations. "The Father of

animals, and fruits of the earth, for the common use of man-why then are the Mysteries confined to a few, and those not always the most wise and most virtuous?" This is the general sense of a long passage, vol. ii. p. 260. Ed. Mangey.

• The republic severely prohibited these practices, which were unknown in its earlier and better days. Dionys. Hal. ii. viii.

b Ορᾷς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν συνθήματων ; πῆ τις τράπηται; ποῖον αὐτῶν κατελέξομεν ; τίνι πεισθῶ τῶν παραγVOL. I.

yeλμáтwv; Max. Tyr. xxxv. sub fin. • Neander has likewise quoted several of the same authorities adduced in the following passage. See the translation of Neander, which had not been announced when the above was written. It is curious that Strabo remarks, on another point, the similarity of the Indian opinions to Pla tonism, and treats them all as μúloɩ :—Παραπλέκουσι δὲ καὶ μύθους, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων, περί τε ἀφθαρσία; ψυχῆς, καὶ τῶν καθ ̓ ᾅδου κρίσεων καὶ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα. L. xv. p. 713.

D

34

PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEMS.

BOOK I.

the worlds," says Plato in this tone, "it is difficult to discover, and, when discovered, it is impossible to make him known to all." So, observes a German historian of Christianity, think the Brahmins of India. Plato might aspire to the creation of an imaginary republic, which, if it could possibly be realised, might stand alone, an unapproachable model of the physical and moral perfection of man; but the amelioration of the whole world, the simultaneous elevation of all nations, orders, and classes to a higher degree of moral advancement, would have been a vision from which even his imagination would have shrunk in despair. This remained to be conceived and accomplished by one who appeared to the mass of mankind in his own age, as a peasant of Palestine.

philosopnic

systems.

It cannot be denied that, to those whom it deigned Varieti of to address, philosophy was sufficiently accommodating; and whatever the bias of the individual mind, the school was open, and the teacher at hand, to lead the inquirer, either to the luxurious gardens of Epicurus, or among the loftier spirits of the Porch. In the two prevalent systems of philosophy, the Epicurean and the Stoic, appears a striking assimilation to the national character of the two predominant races which constituted the larger part of the Roman world. The Epicurean, with its subtle metaphysics, ism accordant its abstract notion of the Deity, its imaginative character; materialism, its milder and more pleasurable morals, and perhaps its propensity to degenerate into indolence and sensuality, was kindred and congenial to that of Greece, and the Grecian part of the Roman Stoicism to society. The Stoic, with its more practical character, its mental strength and self-confidence, its fatalism, its universally diffused and all

Epicurean

to Greek

Roman.

CHAP. I.

ACADEMICS.

333

35

governing Deity, the soul of the universe (of which the political power of the all-ruling republic might appear an image), bore the same analogy to that of Rome. While the more profound thinkers, who could not disguise from themselves the insufficiency of the grounds on which the philosophical systems rested, either settled into a calm and contented scepticism, Academics. or, with the Academics, formed an eclectic creed from what appeared the better parts of the rest.

d

Such on all the great questions of religion, the divine nature, providence, the origin and future being of the soul, was the floating and uncertain state of the human mind. In the department of morals, Philosophy nobly performed her part; but perhaps her success in this respect more clearly displayed her inefficiency. The height to which moral science was carried in the works of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Antoninus, while it made the breach still wider between the popular religion and the advanced state of the human mind, more vividly displayed the want of a faith, which would associate itself with the purest and loftiest morality; and remarry, as it were, those thoughts and feelings which connect man with a future state of being, to the practical duties of life.

d Augustine, speaking of the great work of Varro, concludes thus:-In hac totâ serie pulcherrimæ et subtilissimæ disputationis, vitam æternam frustra quæri et sperari, facillime apparet. Civ. Dei, vi. 3.

• Gibbon and many other writers (Law, Theory of Religion, 127, 130; Sumner, Evidences, p. 76) have adduced the well-known passages from Sallust and Cicero, which indicate the general state of feeling on the great

question of the immortality of the soul. There is a striking passage in a writer whose works have lately come to light through the industry of Angelo Mai. The author is endeavouring to find consolation for the loss of a favourite grandson: Si maximè esse animas immortales constet, erit hoc philosophis disserendi argumentum, non parentibus desiderandi remedium. Front. de Nep. Amiss.

36

Philosophy

fatal to

popular religion.

For while these speculations occupied the loftier and more thinking minds, what remained for the vulgar of the higher and of the lower orders? Philosophy had shaken the old edifice to its base; and even if it could have confined its more profound and secret doctrines within the circle of its own elect, if its contempt for the old fables of the popular creed had been more jealously guarded, it is impossible but that the irreligion of the upper order must work downwards upon the lower. When religion has, if not avowedly, yet manifestly, sunk into an engine of state policy, its most imposing and solemn rites will lose all their commanding life and energy. Actors will perform ill who do not feel their parts. "It is marvellous," says the Epicurean in Cicero, "that one soothsayer (Haruspex) can look another in the face without laughing." And when the Epicurean himself stood before the altar, in the remarkable language of Plutarch, "he hypocritically enacted prayer and adoration from fear of the many; he uttered words directly opposite to his philosophy. While he sacrifices, the ministering priest seems to him no more than a cook, and he departs uttering the line of Menander, I have sacrificed to Gods in whom I have no concern.””↑

Literature.

Unless indeed the literature as well as the philosophy of the age immediately preceding Christianity had been confined to the intellectual aristocracy, the reasoning spirit, which rejected with disdain the old imaginative fables, could not but descend at least as low as the rudiments of liberal education. When the gravest writers, like Polybius and Strabo,

f Quoted also by Neander from Plutarch. (Non poss. suav. viv. sec.

Epic.) I have adopted Reiske's reading of the latter clause.

CHAP. I.

وو

find it necessary to apologise to their more learned and thinking readers for the introduction of those mythic legends which formed the creed of their ancestors, and to plead the necessity of avoiding offence, because such tales are still sacred among the vulgar, this deference shows rather the increasing indifference, than the strength of popular opinion. "Historians," says the former writer, "must be pardoned, if for the sake of maintaining piety among the many, they occasionally introduce miraculous or fabulous tales; but they must not be permitted on these points to run into extravagance. "Religion," he declares in another passage, "would perhaps be unnecessary in a commonwealth of wise men. But since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, it is right to restrain it by the fear of the invisible world, and such tragic terrors. Whence our ancestors appear to have introduced notions concerning the Gods, and opinions about the infernal regions, not rashly or without consideration. Those rather act rashly and inconsiderately who would expel them." "It is impossible," observes the inquiring geographer, "to govern a mob of women, or the whole mixed multitude, by philosophic reasoning, and to exhort them to piety, holiness, and faith; we must also employ superstition. with its fables and prodigies. For the thunder, the ægis, the trident, the torches, the serpents, the thyrsi of the Gods are fables, as is all the ancient theology; but the legislature introduced these things as bugbears to those who are children in understanding." In short even when the Roman writers professed the utmost respect for the religious institutions of their country,

✔ Polyb. vi. 56.

g

h

Strabo, lib. 1. p. 19.