Part 2 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Not Properly a Pantheist]

Having given so much s.p.a.ce to an ancient who seems to me specially interesting as a prophet of the ultimate apotheosis of earthly religions, I must be content to indicate, in a very few lines, the course of the Pantheistic tradition among the Greeks after his day. The arithmetical mysticism of Pythagoras has no bearing upon our subject.

Empedocles of Agrigentum, living about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and thus, perhaps, in the second generation after Xenophanes, was, in many respects, a much more imposing figure--clothed in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness, sympathy, and ”magnetism.” But he does not appear to have so nearly antic.i.p.ated modern Pantheism as did his humbler predecessor. For though the fragments of Empedocles, much larger in volume than those of Xenophanes, certainly hint at some kind of everlasting oneness in things, and expressly tell us that there is no creation nor annihilation, but only perpetual changes of arrangement, yet they present other phases of thought, apparently irreconcileable with the doctrine that there is nothing other than G.o.d. Thus he teaches that there are four elements--earth, air, water and fire--out of which all things are generated. He also antic.i.p.ates Lucretius in his pessimistic view of humanity's lot; and insists on the apparently independent existence of a principle of discord or strife in the Universe. It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him to have set forth precociously the Darwinian theory of the struggle for life. For his notion seems much more akin to the Zoroastrian imagination of Ahriman. Again, he sings melodiously, but most unphilosophically, of a former golden age, in which the lion and the lamb would seem to have lain down together in peace; and trees yielded fruit all the year round.

At that time the only deity was Venus, who was wors.h.i.+pped with bloodless offerings alone. Still, it must be remembered that, whether consistently or not, Empedocles produced an elaborate work on the Nature of Things, to which Lucretius makes eloquent and earnest acknowledgments. But that very approval of Lucretius forbids us to regard the older poet as a Pantheist in our sense of the term. For certainly to him the Universe cannot have been a living G.o.d.

[Sidenote: Genesis of Modern Religious Pantheism.]

Between this philosophical idea of a Oneness, not thought of as G.o.d, and the spiritual contemplation of a universal Life of which all things are modes, the highest thoughts of men hovered during the process by which, in some measure under extraneous influences, Greek speculation finally produced Neo-platonism--or, as we might say in the current phraseology of our time--a restatement of Plato's teaching. Of this school, arising in the early Christian centuries, some leaders were undoubtedly Pantheists. But we cannot say this of Plato himself, nor of his master Socrates. For though these great men were more profoundly interested in the moral order of the world than in any questions of physical nature, or even of metaphysical subtleties, they were never given to the kind of contemplation suggested above in extracts from the Cla.s.sical Books of the East, the contemplation which educes the moral ideal from unreserved subordination of self to the Universe as of the part to the Whole. Doubtless the inspiration imparted by Socrates to a disciple in mere intellect his superior, and the resulting moral and religious suggestions abounding in the Dialogues, did much to impel the current of religious evolution toward that spiritual aspect of the Infinite All which fascinated some of the Neo-Platonists, and received its most splendid exposition from Spinoza. But the conditions imposed by necessary brevity compel me to pa.s.s by those cla.s.sic names with this acknowledgment, and to hasten toward the fuller revelation of Pantheism as a religion.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Some scholars think they can trace Christian, influences in the exceptionally late Bhagavad Gita, hereafter quoted. But it is a disputed point; and certainly in the case of the Vedas and pre-Christian literature arising out of them even Jewish influence was impossible.]

[Footnote 3: As imperious brevity excludes full explanation, I must content myself with a reference to _The Religion of the Universe_, pp.

152-5. London: Macmillan & Co.]

[Footnote 4: According to the late Max Muller, with whom Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids agrees, the word Upanishad is equivalent to our word ”sitting” or ”session”; only that it is usually confined to a sitting of master and pupil.]

[Footnote 5: _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. i. p. 92. The immediately following quotations are from the same Upanishad.]

[Footnote 6: ”The G.o.ds of ocean, air and fire, and the judge of the lower regions respectively” (Rev. John Davies).]

[Footnote 7: The ”Bhagavad Gita,” translated by the Rev. J. Davies, M.A.]

[Footnote 8: The Karma was _not_ a soul. What it was is, according to our authorities, very difficult for the Western mind to conceive. But its practical effect was, that on the death of the imperfect man, another finite existence of some sort necessarily took his place. But this new finite existence was not the former man. It is only on the death of him who has attained Nirvana that Karma ceases to act, and no new finite existence takes his place.]

[Footnote 9: See Prof. W. Max Muller, on ”Egypt,” in the _Encyc.

Biblica._]

[Footnote 10: ”Capability of walking home without help,” is the limit quaintly fixed by the poet. To our modern feeling it seems rather wide.

Yet, practically, it is the limit professedly observed by our publicans in serving their customers.]

[Footnote 11: Karsten, _Xenophanis Reliquiae_, p. 68 (Amsterdam, 1830).

Both the paraphrase and occasional translations which I give are of course free; but I think the spirit and meaning are preserved.]

CHAPTER II

POST-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM.

In speaking of Neo-Platonism I incidentally mentioned its apparent subjection to ”extraneous influences,” These, of course, included the rising power of Christianity and its Jewish traditions.

[Sidenote: The Hebrew Tradition.]

Even before the advent of the new revelation, the Jewish settlements existing in all great cities of the Graeco-Roman world excited interest at any rate among sentimentalists touched by the fascination at that time beginning to be exerted by oriental religions. And this influence of Jewish traditions was much facilitated by the existence of a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

[Sidenote: Its Influence on Greek Philosophy.]