I. CHAP. Euphrates or the Rhine, or in the mortal conflict for patrician or plebeian supremacy, now that the field of military or civil distinction was closed, turned inward and preyed upon itself; or compressed by the iron hand of despotism, made itself a vent in philosophical or religious speculations. The noble mind sought a retreat from the degradation of servitude in the groves of the Academy, or attempted to find consolation for the loss of personal dignity, by asserting with the Stoic the dignity of human nature.* Philo sophy. But Philosophy aspired in vain to fill that void in the human mind, which had been created by the expulsion or secession of religion. The objects of Philosophy were twofold, either-1. to refine the popular religion into a more rational creed; or, 2. to offer itself as a substitute. With this first view it endeavoured to bring back the fables to their original meaningt, to detect the latent truth under whose admirable work (die Römis- man nature. * Cicero, no doubt, speaks the language of many of the more elevated minds when he states that he took refuge in philosophy from the afflictions of life at that dark period of civil contention. Hortata etiam est, ut me ad hæc conferrem, animi ægritudo, magnâ et gravi commota injuriâ: cujus si majorem aliquam levationem reperire potuissem, non ad hæc potissimum confugissem. De Nat. Deor. i. 4. + Πραγμάτων ὑπ' ἀνθρωπίνης ἀσθενείας οὐ καθορωμένων σαφῶς εὐσχημονέστερος ἑρμηνεὺς ὁ μῦθος. Max. Tyr., Dissert. X. The whole essay is intended to prove that poetry and philosophy held the same doctrine about the gods. This process, it should be observed, though it had already commenced, was not carried to its height until philosophy and polytheism coalesced again, from the sense of their common danger, and endeavoured to array a system composed of the most rational and attractive parts of both, against the encroachments of Christianity. I. the allegoric shell: but in many cases the key was CHAP. lost, or the fable had wandered so far from its primary sense, as to refuse all rational interpretation; and where the truth had been less encumbered with fiction, it came forth cold and inanimate: the philosopher could strip off the splendid robes in which the moral or religious doctrine had been disguised, but he could not instil into it the breath of life. The imagination refused the unnatural alliance of cold and calculating reason; and the religious feeling, when it saw the old deities reduced into ingenious allegories, sank into apathy; or vaguely yearned for some new excitement, which it knew not from what quarter to expect. teries. The last hopes of the ancient religion lay in the The MysMysteries. Of them alone the writers, about the time of the appearance of Christianity, speak with uniform reverence, if not with awe. They alone could bestow happiness in life, and hope in death.* In these remarkable rites † the primitive Nature-worship had survived under a less refined and less humanized form; the original and more simple symbolic forms (those of the first agricultural inhabitants of Greece ‡) had been retained by * Neque solum cum lætitiâ vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi. Cic. de Leg. ii. 14. The theory of Warburton on the Mysteries is now universally exploded; but neither, with the utmost deference to his erudition, can I enter altogether into the views of Lobeck. In my judgement his quotations do not bear him out, as to the publicity of the ceremonies; nor can I conceive that there was none, or scarcely Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum The theories of Maier, Warburton, Plessing, Boulanger, Dupuis, Meiners, Villoison, P. Knight, Heeren, St. Croix, Creuzer, may be found briefly stated, Lobeck, I. 6. 8. Quibus explicatis, ad rationem I. CHAP. ancient reverence: as its allegory was less intricate and obscure *, it accommodated itself better with the advancing spirit of the age. It may indeed be questioned whether the Mysteries did not owe much of their influence to their secrecy, and to the impressive forms, under which they shadowed forth their more recondite truths.t These, if they did not satisfy, yet kept the mind in a state of progressive and continued excitement. They were, if it may be so said, a great religious drama, in which the initiated were at once spectators and actors; where the fifth act was designedly delayed to the utmost possible point, and of this still suspended catastrophe, the dramatis personæ, the only audience, were kept in studied ignorance. ‡ The Mysteries had, perhaps, from an early period associated a moral§ purport with their sacred shows; and with the progress of opinion, the moral would more and more predominate over the primitive religious meaning. Yet the morality of the Mysteries was apparently that of the ancient Nature-wor que revocatis, rerum magis natura *See Varro's View of the Eleu- † Αγνωσία σεμνότης ἐπὶ τελετῶν καὶ νύξ. διὰ τοῦτο πιστεύεται τὰ μυστήρια, καὶ ἄβατα σπήλαια διὰ τοῦτο ὀρύττεται, καιροὶ καὶ τόποι KOÚTTEL EldÓTES appηrovрyiav EvOɛov. Synes, de Prov. Compare the splendid passage in Dio. Chrys. Orat. 12. Non semel quædam sacra traduntur: Eleusis servat, quod osten dat revisentibus. Rerum natura, sacra sua non simul tradit. Initiatos nos credimus: in vestibulo ejus hæremus. Sen. Nat. Quæst. vii. 31. Ut opinionem suspendio cognitionis ædificent, atque ita tantam majestatem adhibere videantur, quantum præstruxerunt cupiditatem. Tert. adv. Valent. c. 1. Pindar, Frag. 116. Sophocles. Fragm. Luc. LVIII. İsoc. Pan. VII. Plato, Men. Even Lobeck allows this of the Eleusinian Mysteries-Sacerdotes interdum aliquid de metempsychosi dixisse largiar.” i. 73. I. ship of the East. It taught the immortality of CHAP. the soul, as a part of that vast system of nature, which, emanating from the Supreme Being, passed through a long course of deterioration or refinement, and at length returned and resolved itself into the primal source of all existence. But the Mysteries, from their very nature, could only act upon the public mind in a limited manner*: directly they ceased to be mysteries they lost their power. Nor can it be doubted, that while 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 Philosophy. still more manifestly deficient. For, in the first *The Jews were forbidden to be initiated in the Mysteries. In the Greek text of the LXX, a text was interpolated or mistranslated (Deut. xxiii. 17.), in which Moses, by an anachronism not uncommon in the Alexandrian school, was made distinctly to condemn these peculiar rites of paganism. + Philo demands why, if they are so useful, they are not public: "Nature makes all her most beautiful and splendid works, her heaven and all her stars for the sight of all; her seas, fountains, and rivers, the annual temperature of The republic severely prohi- CHAP. place, it was unable, or condescended not, to reach I. 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 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 * Ορᾷς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν συνθήματων ; πῆ τις τράπηται; ποῖον αὐτῶν κατελέξομεν; τίνι πεισθῶ τῶν παραγγελμάτων ; 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 Platonism, and treats them all as μύθοι:—Παραπλέκουσι δὲ καὶ μύθους, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων, περί τε ἀφθαρσίας ψυχῆς, καὶ τῶν καθ ̓ ᾅδου κρίσεων καὶ ἄλλα τοιaura. L. xv. p. 713. |
