Part 2 (2/2)

The ethical alliance of Herac.l.i.tus is with the Sophists, and the Cyrenaics or the Epicureans; that of Parmenides, with Socrates, and the Cynics or the Stoics. The Cynic or Stoic ideal of a static calm is as truly the moral or practical equivalent of the Parmenidean doctrine of the One, as the Cyrenaic monochronos hedone+--the pleasure of the ideal now--is the practical equivalent of the doctrine of motion; and, as sometimes happens, what seems hopelessly perverse as a metaphysic for the understanding is found to be realisable enough as one of many phases of our so flexible human feeling. The abstract philosophy of the One might seem indeed to have been translated into the terms of a human will in the rigid, disinterested, renunciant career of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, its mortal coldness. Let me however conclude with a doc.u.ment of the Eleatic temper, nearer in its origin to the age of Plato: an ancient fragment of Cleanthes the Stoic, which has justly stirred the admiration of Stoical minds; though truly, so hard is it not to lapse from those austere heights, the One, the Absolute, has become in it after all, with much varied colour and detail in his relations to concrete things and persons, our father Zeus.

An ill.u.s.trious athlete; then a mendicant dealer in water-melons; chief pontiff lastly of the sect of the Stoics; Cleanthes, as we see him in anecdote [49] at least, is always a loyal, sometimes a very quaintly loyal, follower of the Parmenidean or Stoic doctrine of detachment from all material things. It was at the most critical points perhaps of such detachment, that somewhere about the year three hundred before Christ, he put together the verses of his famous ”Hymn.” By its practical indifference, its resignation, its pa.s.sive submission to the One, the undivided Intelligence, which dia panton phoita+--goes to and fro through all things, the Stoic pontiff is true to the Parmenidean schooling of his flock; yet departs from it also in a measure by a certain expansion of phrase, inevitable, it may be, if one has to speak at all about that chilly abstraction, still more make a hymn to it. He is far from the cold precept of Spinoza, that great re-a.s.sertor of the Parmenidean tradition: That whoso loves G.o.d truly must not expect to be loved by Him in return. In truth, there are echoes here from many various sources. Ek sou gar genos esmen+:--that is quoted, as you remember, by Saint Paul, so just after all to the pagan world, as its testimony to some deeper Gnosis than its own. Certainly Cleanthes has conceived his abstract monotheism a little more winningly, somewhat better, than dry, pedantic Xenophanes; perhaps because Socrates and Plato have lived meanwhile. You might even fancy what he says an echo from Israel's devout response to the announcement: ”The Lord thy G.o.d is one Lord.” The Greek [50] certainly is come very near to his unknown cousin at Sion in what follows:--

kydist', athanaton, polyonyme, pankrates aiei Zeu, physeos archege, nomou meta panta kybernon, chaire se gar pantessi themis thnetoisi prosaudan, k.t.l.

Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, I. p. 151.

Thou O Zeus art praised above all G.o.ds: many are Thy names and Thine is all power for ever.

The beginning of the world was from Thee: and with law Thou rulest over all things.

Unto Thee may all flesh speak: for we are Thy offspring.

Therefore will I raise a hymn unto Thee: and will ever sing of Thy power.

The whole order of the heavens obeyeth Thy word: as it moveth around the earth:

With little and great lights mixed together: how great art Thou, King above all for ever!

Nor is anything done upon earth apart from Thee: nor in the firmament, nor in the seas:

Save that which the wicked do: by their own folly.

But Thine is the skill to set even the crooked straight: what is without fas.h.i.+on is fas.h.i.+oned and the alien akin before Thee.

Thus hast Thou fitted together all things in one: the good with the evil:

That Thy word should be one in all things: abiding for ever.

Let folly be dispersed from our souls: that we may repay Thee the honour, wherewith Thou hast honoured us:

Singing praise of Thy works for ever: as becometh the sons of men.+

NOTES

29. +Transliteration: To Syngramma. Translation: ”The Prose.”

32. +Transliteration: ousia achromatos, aschematistos, anaphes. E-text editor's translation: ”the colorless, utterly formless, intangible essence.” Plato, Phaedrus 247c. See also Appreciations, ”Coleridge,”

where Pater uses the same quotation.

33. +Transliteration: aphasia. Liddell and Scott definition: ”speechlessness.”

34. +Transliteration: to on. Translation: ”that which is.”

35. +The principle is that of Baruch Spinoza.

36. +Transliteration: Kosmos. Liddell and Scott definition: ”I. 1.

<script>