Part 4 (1/2)

In its main outlines this is all the information that I have been able to glean about the general decline of the belief in the G.o.ds during the h.e.l.lenistic period. Judging from such information we should expect to find strong tendencies to atheism in the philosophy of the period. These antic.i.p.ations are, however, doomed to disappointment. The ruling philosophical schools on the whole preserved a friendly att.i.tude towards the G.o.ds of the popular faith and especially towards their wors.h.i.+p, although they only accepted the existing religion with strict reservation.

Most characteristic but least consistent and original was the att.i.tude of the Stoic school. The Stoics were pantheists. Their deity was a substance which they designated as fire, but which, it must be admitted, differed greatly from fire as an element. It permeated the entire world. It had produced the world out of itself, and it absorbed it again, and this process was repeated to eternity. The divine fire was also reason, and as such the cause of the harmony of the world-order. What of conscious reason was found in the world was part of the divine reason.

Though in this scheme of things there was in the abstract plenty of room for the G.o.ds of popular belief, nevertheless the Stoics did not in reality acknowledge them. In principle their standpoint was the same as Aristotle's. They supposed the heavenly bodies to be divine, but all the rest, namely, the anthropomorphic G.o.ds, were nothing to them.

In their explanation of the origin of the G.o.ds they went beyond Aristotle, but their doctrine was not always the same on this point. The earlier Stoics regarded mythology and all theology as human inventions, but not arbitrary inventions. Mythology, they thought, should be understood allegorically; it was the nave expression partly of a correct conception of Nature, partly of ethical and metaphysical truths. Strictly speaking, men had always been Stoics, though in an imperfect way. This point of view was elaborated in detail by the first Stoics, who took their stand partly on the earlier naturalism which had already broken the ground in this direction, and partly on sophistic, so that they even brought into vogue again the theory of Prodicus, that the G.o.ds were a hypostasis of the benefits of civilisation. Such a standpoint could not of course be maintained without arbitrariness and absurdities which exposed it to embarra.s.sing criticism. This seems to have been the reason why the later Stoics, and especially Poseidonius, took another road. They adopted the doctrine of Xenocrates with regard to demons and developed it in fantastic forms. The earlier method was not, however, given up, and at the time of Cicero we find both views represented in the doctrine of the school.

Such is the appearance of the theory. In both its forms it is evidently an attempt to meet popular belief half-way from a standpoint which is really beyond it. This tendency is seen even more plainly in the practice of the Stoics. They recognised public wors.h.i.+p and insisted on its advantages; in their moral reflections they employed the G.o.ds as ideals in the Socratic manner, regardless of the fact that in their theory they did not really allow for G.o.ds who were ideal men; nay, they even went the length of giving to their philosophical deity, the ”universal reason,” the name of Zeus by preference, though it had nothing but the name in common with the Olympian ruler of G.o.ds and men. This pervading ambiguity brought much well-deserved reproof on the Stoics even in ancient times; but, however unattractive it may seem to us, it is of significance as a manifestation of the great hold popular belief continued to have even on the minds of the upper cla.s.ses, for it was to these that the Stoics appealed.

Far more original and consistent is the Epicurean att.i.tude towards the popular faith. Epicurus unreservedly acknowledged its foundation, _i.e._ the existence of anthropomorphic beings of a higher order than man. His G.o.ds had human shape but they were eternal and blessed. In the latter definition was included, according to the ethical ideal of Epicurus, the idea that the G.o.ds were free from every care, including taking an interest in nature or in human affairs. They were entirely outside the world, a fact to which Epicurus gave expression by placing them in the empty s.p.a.ces between the infinite number of spherical worlds which he a.s.sumed. There his G.o.ds lived in bliss like ideal Epicureans. Lucretius, the only poet of this school, extolled them in splendid verse whose motif he borrowed from Homer's description of Olympus. In this way Epicurus also managed to uphold public wors.h.i.+p itself. It could not, of course, have any practical aim, but it was justified as an expression of the respect man owed to beings whose existence expressed the human ideal.

The reasons why Epicurus a.s.sumed this att.i.tude towards popular belief are simple enough. He maintained that the evidence of sensual perception was the basis of all knowledge, and he thought that the senses (through dreams) gave evidence of the existence of the G.o.ds. And in the popular ideas of the bliss of the G.o.ds he found his ethical ideal directly confirmed. As regards their eternity the case was more difficult. The basis of his system was the theory that everything was made of atoms and that only the atoms as such, not the bodies composed of the atoms, were eternal. He conceived the G.o.ds, too, as made of atoms, nevertheless he held that they were eternal. Any rational explanation of this postulate is not possible on Epicurus's hypotheses, and the criticism of his theology was therefore especially directed against this point.

Epicurus was the Greek philosopher who most consistently took the course of emphasising the popular dogma of the perfection of the G.o.ds in order to preserve the popular notions about them. And he was the philosopher to whom this would seem the most obvious course, because his ethical ideal-quietism-agreed with the oldest popular ideal of divine existence.

In this way Epicureanism became the most orthodox of all Greek philosophical schools. If nevertheless Epicurus did not escape the charge of atheism the sole reason is that his whole theology was denounced off-hand as hypocrisy. It was a.s.sumed to be set up by him only to s.h.i.+eld himself against a charge of impiety, not to be his actual belief. This accusation is now universally acknowledged to be unjustified, and the Epicureans had no difficulty in reb.u.t.ting it with interest. They took special delight in pointing out that the theology of the other schools was much more remote from popular belief than theirs, nay, in spite of recognition of the existing religion, was in truth fundamentally at variance with it. But in reality their own was in no better case: G.o.ds who did not trouble in the least about human affairs were beings for whom popular belief had no use. It made no difference that Epicurus's definition of the nature of the G.o.ds was the direct outcome of a fundamental doctrine of popular belief. Popular religion will not tolerate pedantry.

In this connexion we cannot well pa.s.s over a third philosophical school which played no inconspicuous role in the latter half of our period, namely, Scepticism. The Sceptic philosophy as such dates from Socrates, from whom the so-called Megarian school took its origin, but it did not reach its greatest importance until the second century, when the Academic school became Sceptic. It was especially the famous philosopher Carneades, a brilliant master of logic and dialectic, who made a success by his searching negative criticism of the doctrines of the other philosophical schools (the Dogmatics). For such criticism the theology of the philosophers was a grateful subject, and Carneades did not spare it. Here as in all the investigations of the Sceptics the theoretical result was that no scientific certainty could be attained: it was equally wrong to a.s.sert or to deny the existence of the G.o.ds. But in practice the att.i.tude of the Sceptics was quite different. Just as they behaved like other people, acting upon their immediate impressions and experience, though they did not believe that anything could be scientifically proved, _e.g._ not even the reality of the world of the senses, so also did they acknowledge the existing cult and lived generally like good heathens.

Characteristic though Scepticism be of a period of Greek spiritual life in which Greek thought lost its belief in itself, it was, however, very far from supporting atheism. On the contrary, according to the correct Sceptic doctrine atheism was a dogmatic contention which theoretically was as objectionable as its ant.i.thesis, and in practice was to be utterly discountenanced.

A more radical standpoint than this as regards the G.o.ds of the popular faith is not found during the h.e.l.lenistic period except among the less noted schools, and in the beginning of the period. We have already mentioned such thinkers as Strato, Theodorus, and Stilpo; chronologically they belong to the h.e.l.lenistic Age, but in virtue of their connexion with the Socratic philosophy they were dealt with in the last chapter. A definite polemical att.i.tude towards the popular faith is also a characteristic of the Cynic school, hence, though our information is very meagre, we must speak of it a little more fully.

The Cynics continued the tendency of Antisthenes, but the school comparatively soon lost its importance. After the third century we hear no more about the Cynics until they crop up again about the year A.D. 100.

But in the fourth and third centuries the school had important representatives. The most famous is Diogenes; his life, to be sure, is entangled in such a web of legend that it is difficult to arrive at a true picture of his personality. Of his att.i.tude towards popular belief we know one thing, that he did not take part in the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds. This was a general principle of the Cynics; their argument was that the G.o.ds were ”in need of nothing” (cf. above, pp. 60 and 41). If we find him accused of atheism, in an anecdote of very doubtful value, it may, if there is anything in it, be due to his rejection of wors.h.i.+p. Of one of his successors, however, Bion of Borysthenes, we have authentic information that he denied the existence of the G.o.ds, with the edifying legend attached that he was converted before his death. But we also hear of Bion that he was a disciple of the atheist Theodorus, and other facts go to suggest that Bion united Cynic and Hedonistic principles in his mode of life-a compromise that was not so unlikely as might be supposed. Bion's att.i.tude cannot therefore be taken as typical of Cynicism. Another Cynic of about the same period (the beginning of the third century) was Menippus of Gadara (in northern Palestine). He wrote tales and dialogues in a mixture of prose and verse. The contents were satirical, the satire being directed against the contemporary philosophers and their doctrines, and against the popular notions of the G.o.ds. Menippus availed himself partly of the old criticism of mythology and partly of the philosophical attacks on the popular conception of the G.o.ds. The only novelty was the facetious form in which he concealed the sting of serious criticism. It is impossible to decide whether he positively denied the existence of the G.o.ds, but his satire on the popular notions and its success among his contemporaries at least testifies to the weakening of the popular faith among the educated cla.s.ses. In h.e.l.las itself he seems to have gone out of fas.h.i.+on very early; but the Romans took him up again; Varro and Seneca imitated him, and Lucian made his name famous again in the Greek world in the second century after Christ. It is chiefly due to Lucian that we can form an idea of Menippus's literary work, hence we shall return to Cynic satire in our chapter on the age of the Roman Empire.

During our survey of Greek philosophical thought in the h.e.l.lenistic period we have only met with a few cases of atheism in the strict sense, and they all occur about and immediately after 300, though there does not seem to be any internal connexion between them. About the same time there appeared a writer, outside the circle of philosophers, who is regularly listed among the _atheoi_, and who has given a name to a peculiar theory about the origin of the idea of the G.o.ds, namely, Euhemerus. He is said to have travelled extensively in the service of King Ca.s.sander of Macedonia. At any rate he published his theological views in the shape of a book of travel which was, however, wholly fiction. He relates how he came to an island, Panchaia, in the Indian Ocean, and in a temple there found a lengthy inscription in which Uranos, Kronos, Zeus and other G.o.ds recorded their exploits. The substance of the tale was that these G.o.ds had once been men, great kings and rulers, who had bestowed on their peoples all sorts of improvements in civilisation and had thus got themselves wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ds. It appears from the accounts that Euhemerus supposed the heavenly bodies to be real and eternal G.o.ds-he thought that Uranos had first taught men to wors.h.i.+p them; further, as his theory is generally understood, it must be a.s.sumed that in his opinion the other G.o.ds had ceased to exist as such after their death. This accords with the fact that Euhemerus was generally characterised as an atheist.

The theory that the G.o.ds were at first men was not originated by Euhemerus, though it takes its name (Euhemerism) from him. The theory had some support in the popular faith which recognised G.o.ds (Heracles, Asclepius) who had lived as men on earth; and the opinion which was fundamental to Greek religion, that the G.o.ds had _come into existence_, and had not existed from eternity, would favour this theory. Moreover, Euhemerus had had an immediate precursor in the slightly earlier Hecataeus of Abdera, who had set forth a similar theory, with the difference, however, that he took the view that all excellent men became real G.o.ds.

But Euhemerus's theory appeared just at the right moment and fell on fertile soil. Alexander the Great and his successors had adopted the Oriental policy by which the ruler was wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d, and were supported in this by a tendency which had already made itself felt occasionally among the Greeks in the East. Euhemerus only inverted matters-if the rulers were G.o.ds, it was an obvious inference that the G.o.ds were rulers. No wonder that his theory gained a large following. Its great influence is seen from numerous similar attempts in the h.e.l.lenistic world.

At Rome, in the second century, Ennius translated his works into Latin, and as late as the time of Augustus an author such as Diodorus, in his popular history of the world, served up Euhemerism as the best scientific explanation of the origin of religion. It is characteristic, too, that both Jews and Christians, in their attacks on Paganism, reckoned with Euhemerism as a well-established theory. As every one knows, it has survived to our day; Carlyle, I suppose, being its last prominent exponent.

It is characteristic of Euhemerism in its most radical form that it a.s.sumed that the G.o.ds of polytheism did not exist; so far it is atheism.

But it is no less characteristic that it made the concession to popular belief that its G.o.ds had once existed. Hereby it takes its place, in spite of its greater radicalism, on the same plane with most other ancient theories about the origin of men's notions about the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds of popular belief could not survive in the light of ancient thought, which in its essence was free-thought, not tied down by dogmas. But the philosophers of old could not but believe that a psychological fact of such enormous dimensions as ancient polytheism must have something answering to it in the objective world. Ancient philosophy never got clear of this dilemma; hence Plato's open recognition of the absurdity; hence Aristotle's delight at being able to meet the popular faith half-way in his a.s.sumption of the divinity of the heavenly bodies; hence Xenocrates's demons, the allegories of the Stoics, the ideal Epicureans of Epicurus, Euhemerus's early benefactors of mankind. And we may say that the more the Greeks got to know of the world about them the more they were confirmed in their view, for in the varied multiplicity of polytheism they found the same principle everywhere, the same belief in a mult.i.tude of beings of a higher order than man.

Euhemerus's theory is no doubt the last serious attempt in the old pagan world to give an explanation of the popular faith which may be called genuine atheism. We will not, however, leave the h.e.l.lenistic period without casting a glance at some personalities about whom we have information enough to form an idea at first hand of their religious standpoint, and whose att.i.tude towards popular belief at any rate comes very near to atheism pure and simple.

One of them is Polybius. In the above-cited pa.s.sage referring to the decline of the popular faith in the h.e.l.lenistic period, Polybius also gives his own theory of the origin of men's notions regarding the G.o.ds. It is not new. It is the theory known from the Critias fragment, what may be called the political theory. In the fragment it appears as atheism pure and simple, and it seems obvious to understand it in the same way in Polybius. That he shows a leaning towards Euhemerism in another pa.s.sage where he speaks about the origin of religious ideas, is in itself not against this-the two theories are closely related and might very well be combined. But we have a series of pa.s.sages in which Polybius expressed himself in a way that seems quite irreconcilable with a purely atheistic standpoint. He expressly acknowledged divination and wors.h.i.+p as justified; in several places he refers to disasters that have befallen individuals or a whole people as being sent by the G.o.ds, or even as a punishment for impiety; and towards the close of his work he actually, in marked contrast to the tone of its beginning, offers up a prayer to the G.o.ds to grant him a happy ending to his long life. It would seem as if Polybius at a certain period of his life came under the influence of Stoicism and in consequence greatly modified his earlier views. That these were of an atheistic character seems, however, beyond doubt, and that is the decisive point in this connexion.

Cicero's philosophical standpoint was that of an Academic, _i.e._ a Sceptic. But-in accord, for the rest, with the doctrines of the school just at this period-he employed his liberty as a Sceptic to favour such philosophical doctrines as seemed to him more reasonable than others, regardless of the school from which they were derived. In his philosophy of religion he was more especially a Stoic. He himself expressly insisted on this point of view in the closing words of his work on the _Nature of the G.o.ds_. As he was not, and made no pretence of being, a philosopher, his philosophical expositions have no importance for us; they are throughout second-hand, mostly mere translations from Greek sources. That we have employed them in the foregoing pages to throw light on the theology of the earlier, more especially the h.e.l.lenistic, philosophy, goes without saying. But his personal religious standpoint is not without interest.

As orator and statesman Cicero took his stand wholly on the side of the established Roman religion, operating with the ”immortal G.o.ds,” with Jupiter Optimus Maximus, etc., at his convenience. In his works on the _State_ and the _Laws_ he adheres decidedly to the established religion.

But all this is mere politics. Personally Cicero had no religion other than philosophy. Philosophy was his consolation in adversity, or he attempted to make it so, for the result was often indifferent; and he looked to philosophy to guide him in ethical questions. We never find any indication in his writings that the G.o.ds of popular belief meant anything to him in these respects. And what is more-he a.s.sumed this off-hand to be the standpoint of everybody else, and evidently he was justified. A great number of letters from him to his circle, and not a few from his friends and acquaintances to him, have been preserved; and in his philosophical writings he often introduces contemporary Romans as characters in the dialogue. But in all this literature there is never the faintest indication that a Roman of the better cla.s.s entertained, or could even be supposed to entertain, an orthodox view with regard to the State religion.

To Cicero and his circle the popular faith did not exist as an element of their personal religion.

Such a standpoint is of course, practically speaking, atheism, and in this sense atheism was widely spread among the higher cla.s.ses of the Graeco-Roman society about the time of the birth of Christ. But from this to theoretical atheism there is still a good step. Cicero himself affords an amusing example of how easily people, who have apparently quite emanc.i.p.ated themselves from the official religion of their community, may backslide. When his beloved daughter Tullia died in the year 45 B.C., it became evident that Cicero, in the first violence of his grief, which was the more overwhelming because he was excluded from political activity during Caesar's dictators.h.i.+p, could not console himself with philosophy alone. He wanted something more tangible to take hold on, and so he hit upon the idea of having Tullia exalted among the G.o.ds. He thought of building a temple and inst.i.tuting a cult in her honour. He moved heaven and earth to arrange the matter, sought to buy ground in a prominent place in Rome, and was willing to make the greatest pecuniary sacrifices to get a conspicuous result. Nothing came of it all, however; Cicero's friends, who were to help him to put the matter through, were perhaps hardly so eager as he; time a.s.suaged his own grief, and finally he contented himself with publis.h.i.+ng a consolatory epistle written by himself, or, correctly speaking, translated from a famous Greek work and adapted to the occasion.

So far he ended where he should, _i.e._ in philosophy; but the little incident is significant, not least because it shows what practical ends Euhemerism could be brought to serve and how doubtful was its atheistic character after all. For not only was the contemplated apotheosis of Tullia in itself a Euhemeristic idea, but Cicero also expressly defended it with Euhemeristic arguments, though speaking as if the departed who were wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ds really had become G.o.ds.