CHAPTER IV.Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the “Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching.
Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the “Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching.
The question which meets us on the very threshold of an inquiry into the religious views and moral teachings of Plutarch is that involved in a definition of his attitude towards the popular faith. His desire to form a consistent body of doctrine out of its heterogeneous and chaotic elements is not so intense as to blind him to the difficulties of the task. Poets, legislators, and philosophers have jointly contributed to the formation of the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” and Philosophy, Law, and Poetry, avoid reconciliation to as great a degree as, in the days of Solon, the famous Attic factions of the Paraloi, the Epakrioi, and the Pedieis, to the pacification of whose internecine animosities the policy of that statesman was directed. The gods of the philosophers are like the Immortals of Pindar:—
“Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain,And hear not Acheron’s deep and solemn strain.”[133]
“Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain,And hear not Acheron’s deep and solemn strain.”[133]
“Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain,And hear not Acheron’s deep and solemn strain.”[133]
“Not death they know, nor age, nor toil and pain,
And hear not Acheron’s deep and solemn strain.”[133]
Philosophy, too, rejects the Strifes, the Prayers, the Terrors, and the Fears, which Homeric poesy elevates to the divine rank.[134]Its teachings, moreover, are often at variance with religious practices established or recognized by Law and Prescription, as when Xenophanes chid the Egyptians for lamenting Osiris as a mortal, while yet worshipping him as a god. Poets and legislators, in their turn, refuse to recognize the metaphysical conceptions—“Ideas, Numbers, Unities, Spirits”—which philosophers—Platonists, Pythagoreans, and Stoics—have put in the place of Deity.[135]This clashing of discordant elements in the mass of the popular tradition is audible in Plutarch’s exposition of his own views; a fact which is less to be wondered at when we accept the hint furnished in the allusion to Osiris just quoted, and note that Plutarch will not confine his efforts, as “arbitrator between the three Factions which dispute about the nature of the Gods,” to the sphere of Græco-Roman Mythology.[136]But although he will sit in turn at the feet of poets, philosophers, and legislators, borrowing, from Science, Custom, Tradition alike, any teaching which promises ethical usefulness, he frequently insists, both in general terms and in particular discussions on points of practical morals, that Reason must be the final judge of what is worthy of selection as the basis of moral action. Philosophy, in his beautiful metaphor, so full of solemn meaning to a Greek ear, must be our Mystagogue toTheology: we must borrow Reason from Philosophy, and take her as our guide to the mysteries of Religion, reverently submitting every detail of creed or practice to her authority.[137]We shall then avoid the charge that we take with our left hand what our teachers—our legislative, mythological, philosophic instructors—have offered with their right. The selecting and controlling power of Reason, applied to philosophical discussions, will enable us to attain to a becoming conception of the nature of the Deity; applied to the matter of Mythology, it will enable us to reject the narratives, at once discreditable and impossible, which have become current respecting the traditional gods; and, in the sphere of Law and Custom, it will enable us correctly to interpret the legal ordinances and established rules connected with sacrifices and other religious celebrations. The assumption which inspires all Plutarch’s arguments on matters of Religion is that these three sources supply a rational basis for belief and conduct: but that superstition on the one hand, and atheistic misrepresentation on the other, have done so much to obscure the true principles of belief that Philosophy must analyse the whole material over again, and dissociate the rational and the pure from crude exaggerations and unintelligent accretions.[138]It mustbe admitted that he applies no definite rules of criticism, constructs no scientifically exact system of analysis, propounds no infallible dogmas. His canon is the general taste and good sense of the educated man; a canon which, vague as it may seem, is based upon an intelligent knowledge of the practical needs of life, and produces results which are applicable in a remarkable degree to the satisfaction of such needs. As provisional illustrations of Plutarch’s method in the three spheres of Philosophy, Mythology, and National Custom, we may note the discussion on the nature of God in the “De Ε apud Delphos,” the criticism of the great national poets of Greece in the “Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat,” and the remarks in the “De Iside et Osiride” concerning certain religious practices in the worship of these two Egyptian deities.
In the first-named tract the ostensible subjects of discussion are the nature and attributes of Apollo; but it soon becomes quite clear that the argument is concerned with the nature of Deity itself rather than with the functions of the traditional god. “We constantly hear theologians asserting and repeating in verse and in prose that the nature of God is eternal and incorruptible, but that this nature, by the operation of an intelligent and inevitable law, effects certain changes in its own form. At one time God reduces all nature to uniformity by changing His substance to fire; and, again, in a great variety of ways, under many forms, enters into the phenomenal world.[139]... Philosophers,in their desire to conceal these high matters from the common herd, call God’s transmutation into fire by two names—Apollo, to express His unity; Phœbus, to describe His clear-shining purity. To denote God’s suffering the change of His nature into air and water and earth and stars, and the various species of plants and animals, they figuratively tell of ‘tearings asunder’ and ‘dismemberings,’ and in these aspects He is variously called Dionysus, Zagræus, Nyktelius, and Isodaites, and His ‘destructions’ and ‘disappearances,’ His ‘death’ and His ‘resurrection,’ are inventions, enigmas, and myths, fittingly expressing, for the general ear, the true nature of the changes in God’s essence in the formation of the world.”[140]Plutarch here represents himself as the speaker; and while Ammonius, who was Plutarch’s master,[141]and is always spoken of by him with the greatest reverence, is subsequently introduced as taking a different view of the processes by which God produced the world of phenomena, yet neither does he depart from the rational standpoint in his view of the terms under discussion.[142]In allusion to theseterms, as explained by Plutarch from the Stoical view of the Divine Nature,[143]he says, “Surely God would be a less dignified figure than the child in the poem,[144]since the pastime which the child plays with mere sand, building castles to throw them down again, God would thus be ever playing with the universe. On the contrary, God has mysteriously cemented the universe together, overcoming that natural weakness in it which tends perpetually to annihilation. It is the function of some other god, or, rather, of some dæmon, appointed to direct nature in the processes of generation and destruction, to do and suffer these changes.” In both these views the literal acceptation of the mythological names is repudiated, and the two differ only in that the Stoics quoted in Plutarch’s speech make the Supreme Ruler modify His essence to the production of phenomena, while Ammonius relegates that function to a subordinate power; keeping his Platonic Demiurgus pure from these undignified metamorphoses. It will subsequently appear, when we come to deal with the Dæmonology of Plutarch, that the latter view is theone he also actually accepted. The discussion, at any rate, furnishes a capital instance of what Plutarch means by his assertion that Reason must be Mystagogue to Theology. Mythological terms must be examined by Reason before their meaning can be accepted as an element in religious teaching. The particular view taken of the expressions is left to the taste or philosophic bent of the individual critic: to Academic or Stoic reasonings; the only essential is that the crude literal meaning of the terms shall be repudiated as discordant with a rational estimate of the Divine Nature.[145]
In the critical essay, “Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat,” the same method is applied to the whole religious and moral teaching of the national poets. However great Plutarch’s admiration for Plato as man and philosopher may be, his sound sense of what is practicable in common life prevents him from subjecting the ancient poetry of Greece, as an element in ethical culture, to the impossible standard of the “Republic,” and he therefore, on this question, opposes Stoic and Peripatetic wisdom to the teaching of a Master with whose sublime views he often finds himself in agreement.[146]Throughout the whole work heapplies the touchstone of common sense to all the beauties and all the barbarities of the traditionallegends as embodied in Epic and Tragic poetry. Reason and common sense admit the high value of imaginative literature in ethical education, and reason and common sense decide what practical advice shall be given to youthful students of fiction, in order that moral lessons may be driven home, immoral incidents, descriptions, and characters made harmless, or even beneficial, while, at the same time, even purely æsthetic considerations are not neglected.
At the commencement of the “De Iside et Osiride” Plutarch deals fully with numerous examples of religious practices coming under his third description of the sources of religious belief, that, namely, of Law or established Custom. He discusses their meaning in the light of a principle which he states as follows:—“In the religious institutions (connected with the worship of Isis and Osiris) nothing has become established which, however it may appear irrational, mythical, superstitious, has not some moral or salutary reason, or some ingenious historical or physical explanation.”[147]He is not always successful in his search after a moral meaning, or even an ingenioushistorical or physical explanation, in the customs which he subjects to analysis. The rational attitude, however, is unmistakable, and these introductory remarks, personal as they may be to the priestess Clea, and detached from the main body of the work, yet stand in a true harmony with what we shall hereafter see to be its essential purpose, to show, namely, that while Philosophy can grasp the Highest without the intervention of myth or institution, it can also aid a pure conception of the Highest by studying the myths and institutions which foreign peoples have discovered and created as intermediaries betwixt themselves and the Highest.
But in spite of the important part thus assigned to Reason in settling disputed matters of faith, and arbitrating on points of national and individual ethics, Plutarch makes it clear that Piety and Patriotism have claims in this matter which are actually enforced by Reason in her selecting and purifyingrôle. If he had seen, as his age could not see, and as we can see, that Reason can only be the Mystagogue to Religion in a very limited degree, he would probably have been patriot first and philosopher afterwards, or would, perhaps, have accepted the compromise of Cotta, and played each part in turn as public or private necessities dictated. But the crux does not arise, and Plutarch’s position never really has the inconsistency which, carelessly considered, it appears to have, because he is honestly convinced that what Reason rejects in the national faith, it is good for the national faith that it should be deprived of. Hence it is possible togive examples of Plutarch’s views in this direction without assuming that he forgot what prospect lay in exactly the opposite direction. Hence he can quote Ammonius as beautifully tender in his expressions towards those who are bound up in the literal realisms of the Hellenic faith. “Yet must we extend gratitude and love to those who believe that Apollo and the Sun are the same, because they attach their idea of God to that which they most honour and desire of anything they know. They now see the God as in a most beautiful dream: let us awaken them and summon them to take an upward flight, so that they may behold his real vision and his essence, though still they may revere his type, the Sun, and worship the life-giving principle in that type; which, so far as can be done by a perceptible object on behalf of an invisible essence, by a transient image on behalf of an eternal original, scatters with mysterious splendour through the universe some radiance of the grace and glory that abide in His presence.”[148]Not only throughthe dramatic medium of another personality, but also when speaking his own thought directly, Plutarch alludes with a sincere and touching sympathy to the duties and practices of the ancient faith. The first hint of consolation conveyed to his friend Apollonius on the death of his son is given in words which feelingly depict the youth as embodying the ancient Hellenic ideals in his attitude towards the gods, and his conduct towards his parents and friends.[149]The converse of this attitude is indicated in many passages where he deprecates a too inquisitive bearing in the face of questions naturally involved in the doubt clouding many ancient traditions of a religious character. The great discussion on “The Cessation of the Oracles” commences with a reproof directed at those who “would test an ancient religious tradition like a painting, by the touch” and in the “Amatorius” full play is allowed to the exposition of a similar view, a view, indeed, which dominates the whole of this fascinating dialogue. Pemptides, one of the speakers, who rails lightly atlove as a disease, is willing to learn what was in the minds of those who first proclaimed that passion as a god. He is answered by the most important speaker in the conversation, a speaker whose name is not given in the report, which is represented as furnished by one of this speaker’s sons from their father’s account. “Our father, addressing Pemptides by name, said, ‘You are, in my opinion, commencing with great rashness to discuss matters which ought not to be discussed at all, when you ask a reason for every detail of our belief in the gods.Our ancient hereditary faith is sufficient, and a better argument than this could not be discovered or described.But if this foundation and support of all piety be shaken, and its stability and the honoured beliefs that cling to it be disturbed, it will be undermined and no one will regard it as secure. And if you demand proofs about every one of the gods, laying a profane hand on every temple, and bringing sophistical smartness to bear on every shrine, nothing will be safe from your peering eyes and prying fingers. What an abyss of Atheism opens beneath us, if we resolve every deity into a passion, a power, or a virtuous activity!’”[150]This is, of course, an extreme conventional view, but the fact, that it is put so fully, at least argues Plutarch’s sympathy with it, though he would not, in his own person, have pinned himself down to so unqualified an expression of it. It will be noted that in this part of the dialogue the gods only are under discussion, whereas in regard to tradition on other elements in the ancientfaith the same speaker subsequently represents himself as neither altogether a believer nor a disbeliever, and he proceeds to search, in Plutarch’s own special way, for “faint and dim emanations of truth dispersed about among the mythologies of the Egyptians.”[151]Plutarch’s lofty idea of the passion of Love may have induced him in this, as his strenuous moral aim did in so many other instances, to emphasize for the moment any particular aspect of the ancient faith which appeared likely to furnish inspiration to the realization of noble ethical ideals. He is anxious, at all events, that his purely rational arguments shall not carry him too far, as, on one occasion, after a long disquisition, the undoubted purport of which is to refer oracular inspiration to subterraneous fumes and exhalations, or, as one of the speakers says, “to accident and natural means,” Plutarch (“Lamprias” here is clearly a thin disguise of Plutarch himself) is disturbed and confused that he should be thought desirous of refuting any “true and religious” opinions recognized with respect to the Deity; and he forthwith proceeds to prove that it is quite possible to investigate natural phenomena for secondary causes, while recognizing a final cause in the creative Deity.[152]Not only does Plutarch sympathize with those who accept with pious simplicity the tenets of the “ancient and hereditary Faith;” not only does he deprecate too severe a handling of religious questions; but he is also eager to support his view of a subject by showing that it is not out of harmony with thetraditions or prescriptions of the national belief. Concluding that consolatory letter to his wife upon the death of their little daughter, which is the most humane and natural expression of sympathy left us by antiquity, he tries to show that those who die young will earlier feel at home in the other world than those whose long life on earth has habituated their souls to a condition so different from that which exists “beyond the gates of Hades,” and he says that this is a truth which becomes clearer in the light of the ancient and hereditary customs.[153]No libations are poured for the young that are dead. They have no share in earth, nor in the things of earth. The laws do not allow mourning for children of such tender years, “because they have gone to dwell in a better land, and to share a diviner lot.” And he adds, “I know that these questions are involved in great uncertainty; but since to disbelieve is more difficult than to believe, in external matters let us act as the laws enjoin, while within we become more chaste, and holy, and undefiled.”[154]It must not be overlooked that Plutarch was long a priest of the Delphian Apollo, and that the duties of this position responded to some internal need of his soul, and were not regarded by him as a merely official dignity, is proved by the manner in which he alludes to the subject. He is speaking on one occasion of the many indications which the shrine gives of resuming its former “wealth, and splendour, andhonour,” and he congratulates himself on the zealous and useful part he has taken in aiding the work of this revival.[155]He mentions two friends as co-workers in the sacred task, and appears also to felicitate a certain Roman Governor of Achaia on similar grounds. But he reverently proceeds to make it quite clear that it is the god himself who is the ultimate cause of these returning blessings. “But it is not possible that so great a transformation should have taken place in so short a time through human activity, unless the god were present and continuing to inspire his oracle,” and he concludes by censuring those who, in their inability to discern the motive actuating the divine methods with mankind, “depart condemning the god, instead of blaming us or themselves, that they cannot, by reason, discover the intention of the god.”[156]
Plutarch’s attitude of more than tolerance to the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” an attitude which is, of course, not inconsistent with his desire to place that Faith on a rational basis, is partly explicable in the light of his emphatic gratitude to the existing political constitution of the Græco-Roman world. He would have been an admirable co-worker with Mæcenas—πρόθυμος καὶ χρήσιμος[157]—in carrying out the religious reforms ofAugustus. He regarded the welfare of Society and the State, of the family and the individual citizen, as bound up with a belief in the gods whose agency was so clearly visible in bringing the world to that state of perfection which it now enjoyed, and which promised to be eternal. No one now even dreamed of doubting the identity of the gods of Rome with those of Greece, and Plutarch carries the identification to the extent of including the gods of almost every people constituting the Roman Empire.[158]These universal powers had the world in their providential care, and Rome was the divinely chosen instrument of their beneficent purposes. The Emperor is the depository of the sacred governing power of the world.[159]When Tiberius shut himself up in Capreæ, this divine potency never left him. And though expressions of this kind may be interpreted as a merely formal recognition of the official dignity of the Head of the World, Plutarch’s many eloquent descriptions of the blessings of thePax Romanaleave us in no doubt respecting the character of his views on this subject. “I welcome and approve,” says Theon, “the present position of affairs, and the subjects about which we now consult the oracle. For there now reigns among us a great peace and calm.War has ceased. Expulsions, seditions, tyrannies, are no more, and many other diseases and disasters which tormented Greece, and demanded powerful remedies, are now healed. Hence the oracle is no longer consulted on matters difficult, secret, and mysterious, but on common questions of everyday life. Even the most important oracles addressed to cities are concerned with crops and herds, and matters affecting the public health.”[160]In the “Præcepta Gerendæ Reipublicæ” he is still more outspoken in his praise of the Roman administration, and in his recognition of the opportunities which it gives for the culture of the individual character within the limits of a greatly generous sway. Plutarch, as is well known, was gifted with a patriotic regard for the old achievements of the Hellenic name, but he recognizes with so keen an insight the great work being accomplished by Rome in the fostering of municipal institutions, and the establishment of a peace which meant the undisturbed happiness of millions of obscure families,[161]that, in the sphere of practical politics, he deliberately turns away from the group of inspiring ideas connected with ancient Hellenic patriotism. He alludes coldly, perhaps even sneeringly, to such of his contemporaries as fancied they could apply the ancient traditions of glory to those late and unseasonable times, like little children who would try to wear their father’s sandals;[162]counsels a completesubmission to the duly appointed Roman authorities; fully persuaded that within the limits of their supremacy there is as much freedom as a reasonable man could desire to enjoy; and honestly claims to find scope, in a little Bœotian township, for such political ambition as could be safely and wisely indulged.[163]It is not difficult to sneer at the prudential limitation of patriotism to such petty, insignificant, and meagre efforts as the superintendence of bricks and mortar and the carting of municipal rubbish; but the wiser thing is to note that Plutarch’s opposition to vain fancies of the revival of the ancient Hellenic splendour, except perhaps in such a form as a Hadrian might be inclined to revive it in an artificial Panhellenium, is based on the conviction that happiness depends upon the free development of individual character, the unrestricted enjoyment of domestic peace, the undisturbed intercourse of social life; and he knew that the Roman sway made it possible, for Greeks at any rate, to enjoy these blessings to a degree never previously known in their chequered history.[164]With a clear recognition of the historical causes of the political decadence of Hellenism, he regards civic discord as the evil which most demands the attention of those who still seek opportunities for public action, and he is particularly gratefulto the strong hand of Rome for controlling the internecine animosities of Greek cities. “Consider,” says he, “our position with regard to those blessings which are counted as the greatest that a city can enjoy: Peace, Freedom, Fertility of Soil, Increase of Population, Domestic Concord. As regards Peace, our peoples have no present need of politicians. Every Greek war, every Barbarian war, has vanished from among us. For Freedom, our peoples enjoy as much as their rulers allow them,and a greater share would perhaps not be any better for them. For fine seasons and plentiful harvests, for families of ‘children like their sires,’ and for gracious aid to the new-born child, the good man in his prayers will invoke the gods on behalf of his fellow-citizens.”[165]As for civic concord, that, he says, is in our own power, and those who desire a life of political activity could not do better than devote themselves to the task of spreading harmony and friendship among their fellow-citizens. The peace which the Romans have established in the world makes it possible to develop character on these social lines, and he recognizes, in a pregnant comparison, that the freedom which the Greeks enjoy is sufficient to allow the fullest play to the development of their own moral character. The drama is composed and staged: the prompter stands behind the scene ready with the cue: but the player can give his own interpretation of the character he represents, though remembering that a slipmaymeet with a worse fate than mere hissing in the audience.[166]
Plutarch is clearly of opinion that this state of things is best for his fellow-countrymen. He is as firmly convinced of the divine mission of Rome as ever was Virgil or any other patriotic Roman.[167]In his tract “De Fortuna Romanorum,” he discusses the question whether the greatness of Rome was due to Τύχη or Ἀρετή, or, as he expresses the antithesis in another place, to Τύχη or Πρόνοια—to Chance or to Providence, we may translate, if we recognize that here Chance is the divine element, and Providence the human.[168]In other words, is the grandeur of Rome the result of human virtue and forethought, or is it a direct gift of the Deity to mankind? He decides in the latter sense, though conceding much to the valour of individual Romans; and his incidental expressions of opinion bear as much evidence to the divinely inspired and divinely guided character of Roman administration as is borne by his definite conclusion. He says that, whichever way the question is decided, it can only redound to the glory of Rome to be the subject of a discussion which has hitherto been confined to the greatnatural phenomena of the universe—the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the stars. His very words are curiously reminiscent of Virgil’srerum pulcherrima, Roma(τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἔργων τὸ κάλλιστον),[169]as he tells how Time, in concert with the Deity, laid the foundations of Rome, harmonizing to that end the influence of Fortune and Virtue alike, thus establishing for all the nations of mankind a sacred hearth, a harbour and a resting-place, “an anchorage from the wandering seas” of human stress and turmoil, a principle of eternity amid the evanescence and mutability of other things. He describes with great vigour of language the instability of the world under the domination of other Empires, until Rome acquired her full strength and splendour, and brought peace and security and permanence among these warring elements.[170]
Being so satisfied with the constitution of the world, it is natural that Plutarch should have nothing but reverent words for the eternal powers whose guidance had led to so happy a disposition of human affairs. However much Philosophy should endeavour to freethe mind from the crude and vulgar elements in the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” she must never be tempted to profess other than the most pious belief in its fundamental truth and right; and the ultimate aim of Philosophy must be to strengthen and revive the ancient Religion by freeing it from inconsistencies and crudities which, so long as they appeared to be an essential part of the system, only existed to shock the pious and to encourage atheism.
Plutarch’s attitude towards the ancient Faith may thus be defined as one of patriotic acceptance modified by philosophic criticism; not that criticism which tries everything from the fixed standpoint of a set of rules logically irrefutable: but that which is really the spirit of rationalism pervading all philosophies alike. If Plutarch’s attitude is that of a Platonist, it is that of a Platonist whose experience of ordinary human affairs, and whose recognition of their importance in Philosophy, have compelled him to modify the genuine teaching of the Master into something like the spirit of compromise characterizing the later Academics. His teaching is not the philosophic despotism of Plato; it might easily be characterized as “plebeian,”[171]as Epicureanism was by Cicero, or “commonplace,” as Aristotle has been described by Platonists. It breathes that free spirit of truth which bids every man, whether he is a practised philosopher or not, or even if he has not studied mathematics, to give a reason for the faith that is in him: to apply the touchstone of his own practicalexperience and native intelligence to the domain of Ethics and Religion as to the domain of every-day life, because, as a matter of fact, the domain of every-day life is the domain of Religion and Ethics. The dictum of Hesiod, enforced by Aristotle and applied in practice by the Epicureans, and by the Stoics, is the keynote of the teaching of Plutarch:—“He is most excellent of all, who judges of all things for himself.”