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
Muller'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. |
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