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Amongst the rocky Cyclades was a small isiand that by
passing travellers of old was never visited. To the eye of
the Grecian navigator its rugged cliffs appeared to pro
mise a barren surface, unfit for the habitation of man,
and tempted no adventurer to explore the recesses that
lay within. But if any such had climbed the steep granite
precipice,—as my imagination has done,—and had once
safely gained the verdant slope that ascends to the in
land plains, how rich a prospect would have rewarded
the bold attempt!
Never did the glorious sun smile upon a lovelier spot
of earth. Sparkling streams trickled along the green
meadows, or leapt amidst the trees down the steep
ravines, opening into beautiful valleys embosomed in
groves below : where, between the dark cypress and grace
ful olive, glittered the marble dwellings whose light and
stately forms proclaimed their inhabitants to be the sons
of tasteful Greece. The mountain walls of the island rise
highest to the north ; but all around it is encircled by
massive crags,—which, however, are deeply enough cleft
for breezes continually to enter and, hiding amid the
branches, to murmur out tales of sportive malice, about
bewildered boats left tossing outside.
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2
Beautiful Heliados! My subject is the hearts of thy
children, yet I linger in fancy on the verdant summit
of thy plains, and seem bathed in delight at the scene
spread before me. The deep blue sea, dotted with distant
is,lets, sleeps calm o’er the white ridges to south and
west. Dark pines crown the peak that rises high to the
north. But the eastern waves are all dancing in flame,
because soon will the God of light ascend his radiant
car, to lead his splendid course on this day of trium
phant rejoicing. For the day beheld is indeed that on
which Helios attains to his prime glory of solstitial
dominion: the day of annual jubilee to his adorers.
Where was the worship of Helios rendered with purer
and more exclusive honours than on his own island of
Heliados?----- He was to these scholars of nature the One
Supreme Deity; while a secondary homage, and no more,
was paid to the Queen of night and her attendant stars.
The simple cult might seem to show an Eastern origin:
yet this people was undoubtedly sprung from Greece. It
was a colony that had been planted thence in what were
now remote ages, and that consisted of some of the best
and wisest of that land, banished in civic struggle from
their native soil. The children of the first settlers soon for
got the traditions which they had heard from their fathers,
save alone their one ever-memorable legend. The legend,
namely, which related how, when the frail vessel that
bore them was cast wildly about on raging waves, under
heavens all wrapt in storm-clouds, the trembling exiles
prayed to Helios, and He, the gracious God, divided the
clouds, and stood—nay, stood forth in the divine beauty
of his hfiman form, and shot down an arrow before
them into the sea, * whence immediately arose the
rock-bound Heliados. They, singing aloud the praise of
their Deliverer, beat their oars with renewed strength,
and safely moored their bark in a cavern of the island,
* See Grote’s “Greece” Vol. I., p. 327.
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while the waves contended sullenly in vain against the
outward walls, indignant for their rescued prey.
To Helios the grateful settlers dedicated their new
abode. To Helios their piou3 offspring ascribed all the
blessings that multiplied around them. The high-priest
of Helios was the chief magistrate in their little state :
without whose sanction the deliberations of their repub
lican assemblies never passed into law.
For many generations the contented philosophic race
cultivated their island without a wish beyond. But at
length, as their skill increased, some adventurous youths
were bold enough to explore the seas, and seek out their
parent land. And' thence they brought back to the
wondering Heliadans a glowing report of the arts, and
the science, and, above all, of the gods of Greece. By
the knowledge of the latter the allegiance of some was
nearly drawn aside from their own exclusive Deity.
But the eloquence of the sage Philinos convinced all
hearts anew of the superiority of their own simple faith.
“Zeus, Athene, Heracles,” said he, “are figments of
• tradition; but our God is visibly manifest, pouring down
on us, from his benignant throne, life, light, and bless
ing.” The people heard him with gladness, and pro
claimed afresh with solemn vows that Helios alone was
their God, and that only . Him would they serve.
'
The communication with Greece was closed by the
breaking out of the Persian war. But a new stimulus
had been given to the minds of the inhabitants of
Heliados.
Now see from all sides the white-robed trains that
wind up the highest ascent, emulous to gain a place
nearest to the rounded platform at the top. Here, in
dazzling relief against the black pines that crown the
summit, stands an altar with a semi-circular marble
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»
4
alcove, fronting the mid-day sun : to which lead twelve
steps, so numbered from the months of the year.
Foremost the Priests with stately gait lead up the
procession, and range themselves around the altar. Next
follows a troup of young virgins, dedicated to the service
of the temple. Train after train succeeds, till the whole
mountain-side is covered with the band of worshippers,
all robed in white, and garlanded with myrtle or with
flowers. Motionless they stand, till from the glowing
waves emerges the first beam. Then, all arms are raised
aloft, instruments of music give forth a mighty clang, and
as from one voice bursts forth the universal chorus,
“ Ilail to our God, all hail! ”
The chorus swells into full harmony, and lasts until the
full round orb hangs suspended o’er the sea—or, rather,
until Helios has shaken the spray from his golden hair,
and, casting one bright glance along the glittering waves,
springs on in his car of flame to mount the unclouded
heaven.
Then the measure of the music changes. The magnifi
cent hymn subsides into a lighter strain. The multitudes
separate into groups, and around the altar youths and
maidens weave a mazy dance; while song and laughter
resound, and all presents a scene of exuberant but grace
ful mirth. Meanwhile, one individual after another, in
unbroken succession, ascends to the temple, and lays his
offering of fruits or flowers upon the altar, loading the
air with a delicious perfume.
Thus the hours wore on, until the fervid beams of
the mounting sun began to fall too intensely on the ex
posed worshippers. The languid dancers sank on the
heated ground, waving green branches over their heads.
Offerings ceased to be brought, and the songs were grad
ually silenced. Especially within the temple the glare
i5>L-p«
nn HhoioffvorreLracLaLioii, uuv mon
�reflected from the marble walls became intolerable.----- At
a signal from the High Priest, all fell prostrate on the
ground, and a chorus broke forth, solemn and grand, but
subdued and reverential to the degree of extreme awe:—
“Helios! Almighty! We have felt thv power. We adore
thee. The creatures of earth cannot sustain thy glance. Be
merciful in thy majesty!”
When the solemn strain was concluded, the priests led,
and all followed, down the mountain to the shady plains
below, while the virgins sang in cheerful measure,—
" He gave us groves for shelter, and running brooks.’’
Various paths brought the festive crowds again to
assemble on the cool borders of the translucent lake into
which all the tricklings from the mountains discharged
themselves. Here, abundant refreshments were placed,
and, reclined on the soft turf, each indulged himself as
his sportive fancy inclined. For wit and mirth were held
an acceptable homage to the God of light and beauty,
when in this way called forth, and consecrated by the
conscience of his presence. It was thus that sang their
poets, and thus that their priests approved ; for the wor
ship of the Grecian heart was joy. All-comprehensive
must be the homage paid to Him who is Sovereign over
all. Hence also, while the playfulness of lighter spirits
was thus benignly regarded, the graver and the more
philosophic spent the hours of this noontide repose in
the fashion that was their own, of learned converse.
Many a knot was gathered round some favourite sage,
who explained results of scientific research; or hung on
the lips of some traveller returned from Greece, in
structing them in wonders of art, or showing to them
the horrors of military invasion, contrasting with their
own happy tranquility, or, still more appropriately to
the day, giving them cause for a new exulting in the
intelligence and simplicity of their own worship, through
�rTloo.emhp.i’
6
description of idolatrous rites beheld there, to the mul
tiplied deities of the divided land, where gods as much
battled in heaven as their votaries below.
“But where is our Orthinos?” was inquired by many
a disappointed group. “ Has he no new discoveries to
impart to us on this great day of our rejoicing? Who
like him can exalt the praises of Helios, by bringing, as
he has done to us, continually new proof of his mighty
working?”
“See,” said a child, “I have a wondrous gift from
Orthinos. Through it I have seen the beauty of an in
sect’s wing. The master said to me, ‘Behold: thus are
the lowly offspring of earth adorned by the All-bounteous
One.’ He also showed me the secret wonders of fruits
and flowers.”
And in thez group where the priests sat apart, the
Sovereign spoke with displeasure. “Where is Orthinos?
Why addresses he not the people to-day ? ”
“ Sacred Father,” answered an aged priest with mild
and kindly countenance, “thou knowest that Orthinos
is dear to me as an only son. Last night I went to his
dwelling, and found him so deeply plunged in his studies
that he scarcely heeded my entrance. When I bid him
remember the holy assembly of this day, the beam of
his eye, as he looked up, was like that of Helios himself.
He pressed my hand, and words seemed struggling for
utterance; but when I listened as for the inspiration of
the Glorious One, he turned away from me and entreated
me to leave him. I obeyed, for I thought, surely the
God is mighty within him, and he will pour forth his
message to-morrow.”
“ Brother,” said the High Priest, “ I fear we have
erred greatly in our regard to this man. He seeks too
daringly to penetrate the mysteries of heaven. He has
turned his magic instruments to the face of Helios him-
mak-ps no a.noloffvorTe.vr<iCLavroii, mio mniu<.a,
�7
self—not for worship, but in presumptuous curiosity. We
have held our peace, for we deemed him the favourite of
our God. But am not I the accepted minister of Helios ?
And this day he is bold enough to disobey my ordinance.
Henceforth, I will look nearer to this Orthinos.”
“Great King of heaven forbid!” exclaimed Chares.
“ Shall it be suspected that the brightest and noblest son
of Heliados is an enemy to its God!—Is he not the des
cendant of that holy man who denounced the vanity of
the gods of Greece, and first proclaimed the great Helios
for our God alone ? ”
“ Yes: but by the ordinance of that same Philinos was
I appointed the minister of Helios, and the guardian of
his people.”
When the intensity of npon-day heat was past, and
the slanting beams of the descending sun fell with a
milder but a richer glow on the turfy glades, again the
song resounded, and the clang of tymbals woke the
sprightly dance. And as the Monarch sank into his ocean
bed, again did all voices unite in a solemn chorus of
richest harmony,. dying away in soft cadence with the
fading tints of heaven.
Unwilling to disperse, the white bands yet lingered on
the darkened hills:—for loving hearts are closer knit by
the communion of gracious piety. But my fancy now
follows alone the beautiful young maiden that steals
silently away to the depths of a distant grove:—Selene,
whose sweet voice has been trilling like the lark’s, as she has sung in delicious rapture the praises of the God
of day.
In a dark chamber, amidst strange instruments of his
own invention, sits Orthinos. Motionless he has remained
since light vanished out of heaven. Nor yet now is he
aroused by the light step of the maiden as she glides in,
,*
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8
till her soft arms have been laid about his neck, and she
has whispered,—“ My brother, would’st thou have me
with thee ? ’ ’
Orthinos drew her to his side, and passed his arm around
her.
“So weary and sad!—and all but thee have been so
happy on this' glorious day! Would that thou too----Thou dost shake thy head. Then I know that some dis
covery has rewarded thy labour. Wilt thou not impart
it to me ? ’’
“Ask me not. Do thou rather, my Selene, tell me all
the joy of thy innocent heart.”
“Ah! that my joy could shine out upon thy soul—that
I could reflect on thee, like the Queen of night, all the
gladness that has been mine on this day! Am not I thy
Selene, thy moon, who have received from thee all the
light of my mind?—And oh! my brother, this day when
all were rejoicing in the glory of our G-od, how much
brighter was that glory to me for all thou hast taught me
to know of him. I felt how blest was my lot to be near
unto one so wise.----- Why dost thou sigh ? ”
“ Go on, my sister. Tell me all thou hast felt.”
“ Never have I felt so vividly as this day the living in
fluence of our religion. What would be the light of the
sun to us if we knew not that it was the intelligent smile
of our G-od! As plants collapse and shrivel without his
vital warmth, so would even our souls without the blessed
consciousness of his presence. Every chord of our nature
is struck by him, and, tuned by piety, should respond
like Memnon’s lyre. Our eyes behold him; our senses
feel his genial heat; our souls believe and worship. He
is not a God hidden and unknown, but he suffers us to
behold him as he dwells in mysterious solitude in the blue
expanse of heaven. And though at times he may veil
his form, for anger at our sins, or for trial of our faith,
yet for ever he leaves us a glimmering assurance of his
a
unnino-v oTreiraciaiionroab nrru
�9
presence. And when he dismisses us at night, in order
that our mortal senses may have repose from too constant
a communion with his Divineness, he commits us in
charge to his gentle vicegerent. Here, Orthinos, how has
thy science come in aid of religion. For, while our ances
tors believed that in storm and at night Helios was
departed from us, now we know that it is only our earth,
changeful like its creature man, that then turns itself
away, and that He rests for ever fixed in central repose,
the Unchangeable I—I could smile, but that others believe
them now, at the images which held my infant reverence,
of a throned charioteer, careering round the level earth.
How far more glorious is the revelation of thy science, of
Helios holding-in worlds and worlds by his mighty energy,
as they roll and roll around him, ever ready to dash off
into destruction, if his hand were for an instant relaxed,
—he himself being all the time throned immovably on the
middle point of the universe! ”
“No!----- He moves: Helios too moves!----- Yesterday,
while I was watching him intently, the idea occurred to
me. This day I have re-examined all my evidence, and
I am sure. He does not truly occupy the centre of the
world of planets, but is just so far away from it as should
have been, if they, in their turn, have a power over him,
small but real, of the same kind as is that which he holds
over them. And, if so——”
“And, if so, what then?”
“ If so, he is no longer a God, but he is a world like
our own ! ”----“ The voice of Orthinos uttering blasphemy ! ” exclaimed
Chares, who suddenly entered.
“ Convince him that he is wrong, father,” cried Selene,
as she fell at the old man’s feet. “I am lost, myself,
in a fearful amazement. But you will show to him his
error.”
With eager enthusiasm, the philosopher drew forth his
�rTJonombp.i*
10
charts, and rapidly unfolded the course of his discovery
to the priest, who had been hitherto his admiring scholar,
and repeated the awful result. “Is it not manifestly so ?
Every indication confirms the suspicion that this vast
central power is governed by the same laws that deter
mine our own inferior action, and is therefore of a similar
nature.”
“ I am confounded, and know not how to answer thee,”
returned the simple-minded priest. “ But this I know,
that in thy blind pursuit of science thou art overthrowing
a faith which is supported firmly in every other kind of
way.”
“ Father, I have gone over the whole field of nature,
so far as it lies open before me, but all strengthens me in
the belief that there is a sameness of character in that
bright orb of heaven and this our earth.”
“I speak not of evidence that is of sense, rash Orthinos,
but of the stronger proof that touches straight on the
heart of man.”
“I know not what may serve for conviction to other
hearts ; but I myself am a man, and have listened to the
voice of my own heart; and it tells me that that alone is
adorable which is true.”
“Unhappy deluded one! does thy heart then say that
there is no God?”
“ Not so. On the contrary, all nature proclaims a Cause
that is well thought of as Divine. But I see still that
that Cause is far from such as we have believed.”
“How! A God unseen, unfelt? What is that but the
same as nothing—or, at least, a dim something in which
we have no concern, and is therefore no better to us than
nothing ? ”
“ A heaven without our Helios!” cried Selene. “Cold,
dread order, in the place of intelligence and love! To
believe that day restores us to the sight of him, not by
his loving, paternal will, but as a result of dead necessity,
icftrAH Tin a.nmoyv or
oiiavuwiwx,
�11
—to feel but the sort of warmth we might derive from
earthly fuel,—to see but a lamp in heaven, in place of
that clear revelation of Deity, which through our senses
draws our hearts to a constant living perception of a
power above us !----- And is this, then, the fruit of science :
by the bringing us to nearer vision to annihilate the
glorious mystery which dazzled our imagination, to dis
perse the divine phantoms of our own creation, and show
to us that our heaven is but the magnified reflection of
earth!----- Shall then the faith of man for ever yearn and
strive for a something above him, and for ever by know
ledge be cast back upon himself! ”
“I too have felt this,” said Orthinos, not unmoved.
“ But the light has come to me, and how shall I gainsay
it?”
‘‘Listen to me, my son,” rejoined Chares. “Have the
traditions of our fathers any weight with thee ? ”
“None: I have observed too well how superstition can
invent and disguise.”
“Then I will forbear to speak of these. But thou hast
granted that all nature proclaims a Maker?”
“I have. I believe it.”
“ Thou knowest that light and heat are the means of
all growth—that no chemical change ever happens, not
any blade of grass issues forth, no kind of living being is
formed, and thence is no human soul produced, except
through their ministering agency?”
“All this have my experiments gone to prove.”
“And light and heat come alone from the Sun?”
“ Apparently.”
“ Then is Helios the Author of all good! ”
“Or the Instrument.”
“ Granted, my son,” cried the old man triumphantly.
“ But so immediately, so exclusively the instrument, that
he is, as it were, the right hand of all Godhead, the breath
of its mouth, and the one form which it is pleased to put
�on,—and therefore to us the same as full Deity, being
that which is all that we can know of it.”
“Nay, but I have confident expectation that by search
ing I shall truly find out more.”
“Believe it not. Once quitting this safe and certain
ground, a cold and dead negative alone will lie before thee.
And for this thou wilt abandon the warm and cheering
faith which animates the heart and rouses up the virtue
of worshippers ; which lifts their eyes from a grovelling
on this base earth to the ennobling contemplation of
heaven.----- Interrupt me not. I read what thou would’st
say. Who of the Heliadans has gazed upon heaven like
thee? But oh! my son, to look upon heaven with bold
inquiring eye, feeling that thy spirit is master of its
secrets, and that heavenly bodies only lie as it were
beneath thee, to be investigated,—what is this but a
making of thyself the God thou worshippest ? And how
different, how incomparably more becoming to a mortal
being, is the state of mind where the adoring believer
bows consciously himself, before acknowledged Higher
Being, seeing and feeling that he himself is ever subject
to the inspection of Divinity.”
“ Father,” returned Orthinos after a pause, “ there is
much weight in your appeal. I feel there is a moral
difficulty to overcome.”
“Give heed to it, my son: give heed to it. Ponder it
in thy heart; and above all beware that thou disturb
not the faith of others.”
“I will not, while a doubt remains to my own mind.
Too much already I have perhaps said. My Selene, go
thou with this kind father, and let him pour comfort
into thy heart.”
“I will not leave thee, my brother. But oh! father,
bless me still in the name of Helios,” exclaimed the weep
ing girl as she knelt before Chares.
“ May Helios beam into thy soul, my daughter, and
�13
disperse thy doubts as he chaseth the mists of night.
For thee, Orthinos ”—and the old man hesitated and
shuddered, “I dare not say, may Helios bless thee!”
Chares hastened away, and as he passed through the
midnight shade of the grove, the thought of his mind
was a trembling rejoicing that this blasphemy had not
been uttered in the face of day.
With early dawn Selene left her restless couch that
she might go forth, and meet the first glance of rising
Deity. But in passing by the apartment where her brother
was wont to study she stopped, for she saw that he re
mained still seated as she had left him over-night. There,
amid his charts and instruments, he was slumbering with
a smile upon his lips like a happy infant. Selene bent
over him, and dropped a gentle kiss on his large smooth
brow. Orthinos awoke, and the clear soul that beamed
from his eyes seemed full of noble confidence, as of one
that has been in communion with lofty' thoughts. The
ruddy dawn shone into the chamber as Selene extinguished
the flickering lamp; and with one consent the brother
and young sister issued forth.
She looked inquiringly in his face as she turned their
steps to the accustomed hill.----- “ Whither thou wilt.”
In silence they mounted the hill and turned to the
crimson east.----- “ For worship, brother?” murmured the
maiden.
“ Yes, Selene, for worship :—here,—everywhere. Wher
ever we turn, new wonders unfold themselves, beyond the
feeble ken of man. Never was my soul so tuned to wor
ship as now that I seem to have first opened my eyes
upon the miracles of nature. Last night, Selene, as I
pursued my researches, schemes of such vastness of con
ception dawned on me as almost dazzled my imagination.
As yet they are no more than faint gleams; but I shall
trace them into the boundless space before me.”
�“And leave behind thy religion and thy God! What
then shall science avail thee ! ”
“No! if my science be true,—and, I think, none can
prove it false,—that which we have been adoring is no
God, and his worship is superstition, not religion.”
“Whom, what, then shall we worship?”
“ That yet is unknown. But do not shrink from the
idea. He does not the less exist, because we are not yet
able to discern Him.----- 1 will confess to thee that at first,
when it seemed to me truly that the'Maker was annihilated
from creation, I felt dismayed: as if the universe were
suddenly dead, without a soul. But I re-consider, and
find that it is our imagination about Him, not Himself,
that in reality is departed. And though He is yet to seek,
all the proofs we have ever had of His being still remain
as much as ever in full force.”
“But oh1 if invisible, if no object of sense, it seems to
me that He can be no object of love !----- Brother, are
the arguments of Chares without weight ? ”
“Not entirely so. The practical worth of any doctrine
is a testimony in its favour.
The moral value found
in it ought to serve as a guard against our rashly aban
doning it. But it cannot prove, nor can anything prove,
that it is criminal to seek for more knowledge; and much
less can it impugn the claim on us which is that of any
knowledge once surely gained. The really good must be
inevitably at one with the really true. But how can we
know under what influence the old ideas may have sprung
forth, which now are clothed with the sacred form of
religion, and which, having been received as such, have
twined themselves about the deepest and the dearest parts
of our nature—nay, which indeed have by a beautiful
sublimation in character become actually that which they
at first but pretended to be ?
I have spoken to thee of
successive eras in the formation of our globe ;—so, in the
progress of humanity, has religious faith taken stand on
�15
different stages, as new layers of moral civilization have
spread over the rude mental world; and in each success
ive case, no sooner have the flooding waters subsided than
life newly has shot from every pore, fresh verdure has
covered the rocky bed, and a glad creation has arisen as
if it were to endure for ever 1
How ruthless appears to
us, the ephemeral creatures of earth, the destruction that
has repeatedly swept over it, appearing as if destined to
hurl nature back into chaos:—instead of which, each in
stance of destruction has brought it to onward stages of
perfection. Even so it is painful to break up old forms
of religion—to tear away from the heart its long-cherished
associations. Even so is there destruction for a while, in
partial measure, to even morality and virtue. But fear not
in the end for either virtue or religion. These truly are
divine—divine in themselves. They are immortal energies,
inseparable from true human nature, however the facile
images they have been decked in by rude invention may
truly prove destined to perish.”
Orthinos paused, for Helios was breaking forth from
the waves. It was the signal at which all Heliadans were
wont to fall prostrate, and worship. Selene threw her arms
around hei- brother. He pressed her to his bosom, and
together they watched the noblest spectacle of nature.
“ Glorious is that beam,” said the philosopher, “ but
more glorious to me, Selene, was the light that broke in
upon my mind, when the thought flashed on me of the
wondrous balance on which are worlds poised in the
real heaven.”
They descended the hill, and Selene felt that there was
a power in her brother’s soul on which she could rest,
even as she hung upon his arm for bodily support.
Orthinos returned to his study, and the maiden wandered
alone. Alone! yes, Selene felt that she was indeed alone!
She sought the thickest groves, and if a sunbeam crossed
�JL £L
rTJpnornbftr
16
her path., she shrank aside. But the shades were oppres
sive, and seemed to her like the mansion of death. And
when the voices of distant virgins, chanting their morn
ing hymn to Helios, were borne to her on the breezes,
Selene wept. Yet not in thought did she reproach her
brother that he had revealed to her truths too vast and
stern for her weaker soul.
She gloried in his superior
mind. She felt her own enlarged : for hers was of the
kindred nature which could receive, if not originate;
it could appreciate and admire, if it could not itself
accomplish, the daring and undeviating pursuit of truth.
Hers too was the love that would share in all things. He
could not lead, where she was unwilling to follow. But,
now, as a thousand images of home-nourished association
crowrded into her mind, she felt as if the pathway before
her were a drear and barren wilderness, beyond which,
if there lay a fairer home, her strength might fail to
reach it. He, her guide, it appeared to her, was now to
be her all, in earth and heaven.
Meanwhile the youths who were accustomed to be taught
by Orthinos, lamented that he came not forth. Still by
these, who respected his retirement, he was left in quiet.
Nevertheless, it was not long that his study was undis
turbed. For the High Priest sent Chares to summon
him to the royal presence.
Orthinos prayed his friend that he might delay till he
had finished the calculation in which he was plunged.
Bnt the command was imperative, and reluctantly he
obeyed. “ The Ruler of our Isle,” he said, “ has a right
to know the doctrines that are promulgated among his
people ; and I am willing to explain to him, as to all
Heliadans, the discoveries that have opened themselves
to me.”
“ I beseech thee, forbear I Dost thou not perceive that
these notions of thine are utterly subversive, not only of
Tin H.T1UIOH V vr ’
vciutvii,
�17
the religion, but of the whole government of our Isle ;
and that therefore thou must appear to the Ruler, not
only as an impious blasphemer, but also as a rebel ? ”
The idea was startling to Orthinos. For, wholly im
mersed as he had been in his discoveries, he had never
yet contemplated this consequence.
“Be guided by me, my son,” urged the old man, with
tears of earnest affection.
“ Keep these thoughts all
within thy own breast.”
“It is impossible! For all will come and question me
—unless, indeed, I be shut up, or banished from commu
nion with men.----- 1 have no wish to interfere with the
government of our Isle.
We have lived freely and
happily under the paternal sway of our Priest.----- Yet,
I bethink me, this was owing to the cause that our
religion gave its sanction to the yoke, whence voluntarily
was it that we bent to it. I see that if truly our faith
be changed, nought can hinder but that discord and
rebellion will follow.----- -Even so was it, father, that in
the realm of my own nature were discord and rebellion
also stirred. But not for these, nevertheless, did I swerve
from my course. Nor will I now, from any fear of what
may happen to others. For them and me, I am per
suaded, there is no better guide than honest truth.”
Chares would have urged farther, but reverence for
his Sovereign, and religion towards his God, restrained
his lips.
Boldly, but without defiance, Orthinos made his con
fession before the High Priest; and, subsequently, before
the assembled chiefs of the island. Horror and dismay
were in all hearts, contending with the esteem in which
he was universally held, as the wisest of their learned
men. Hitherto, it had never happened in Heliados that
any shedding of blood should appear needful at the bar
of justice. But this was an unheard-of crime; and how
�18
should they arrest its fearful contagion from spreading
amongst the people? dhey would gladly have imposed
silence, and left the inflicting of punishment to the offended
Deity himself. But little would this avail. “ Know,”
said Orthinos, “that the way of science which I have
opened to multitudes of young inquiring minds will lead
also them to the same end that I have gained. In spite
of any endeavours to stop the current of thought, my
example will be repeated a hundred fold Yes, surely as
the light of another morrow will succeed on the darkness
of night, will truth arise on other souls as it has arisen
on mine.”
“He has spoken to his own condemnation,” said the
High Priest. “It is true that even now are there rumours
afloat of impiety diffused among the people. And we
must therefore set a warning before them to restrain
them from following his example. The denier of Helios
must die 1 ”
Thus the deliberations of the day were ended. And
at midnight the prisoner was left for the few short hours
of darkness to feel the unutterable cruelty of his doom.
He prayed that for one year,—one month,—he might enjoy
the precious boon of life. He prayed, at least, that this
night they would allow him his instruments and papers,
that he might finish the scheme on which he had entered.
But the judges—the priestly judges—were inexorable ; and
he repressed the deep anguish of his soul. All access
to his polluting presence was denied. Selene had been
committed to the charge of Chares, who was rendered
responsible that she should neither imbibe nor propagate
the impiety of her brother.
A third morning dawned on Heliados. And once more
the people assembled in crowds on the temple mountain.
But it was not now for joy and exulting worship. On
this day is a sacrifice to be rendered to the Mighty One: —
Tna.KeN nu nruivcr
'i
. 1
I
I
■
|
I!
|
�19
a crowning act of homage, but one of which the memory
will embitter all the worship to follow after.
Again arises Helios, glorious and unclouded in his
majesty. But a blighting mist is already filling the moral
atmosphere that will speedily dim for ever the faith of
his votaries.
The people whispered amongst one another in won
dering indefinite alarm till the white band of priests
appeared and wound up the ascent. Then an utter con
sternation seized on all, for as the priests opened their
ranks, and stood around the altar, they discovered in
the midst their Orthinos! The Sovereign Pontiff stood
forth, and with hand out-stretched towards the God
of day, commanded in the name of Helios that all
should listen.
“This man whom I have sanctioned to teach, and
from whom ye have loved to learn, has become a blas
phemer of our God. While the hearts of all his country
men have been glowing with a loving and grateful homage
to their Founder and Preserver, he has buried himself in
darkness with the spirits of darkness, and has only come
forth to deny the very being of our Helios. What fiery
indignation, what plagues, may not the offended God
hurl down on us, if we suffer this great criminal to dwell
amongst us unpunished ! Wherefore I have commanded
him to be brought here, that he may either worship,
or die.”
rl hen all fixed their eyes with trembling horror on the
prisoner, waiting breathless for his reply.
“I have found that Helios is no God, and I cannot
worship him.”
“Ye have heard his blasphemy, 0 Heliadans. Lift up
your voices with me, and deprecate the wrath of the
Mighty One from falling on us also.”
And the people obeyed, while at the signal of their
Sovereign the priests bound Orthinos to the altar; placing
�XILan<a.mheiy
20
at his feet the instruments of his science, the fruits of
the labour of his life, doomed also to destruction.
‘‘Thus,” said the High Priest, “we commend to Helios
his own victim. In darkness has this sin been engen
dered : let him now feel the potency of the God, warm
and gracious at first, but increasing to fierce overpower
ing might. Until noon shall he remain, in order that
perchance the God may have mercy on him, and touch
his heart.”
Orthinos would have spoken to the people, but they
were bidden to retire out of hearing of his voice, “ in
order,” it was said, “ that he might commune with
Helios alone.”
But there was one whom no command could force to
retire. On the steps of the altar knelt Selene, her
appalled guardian at her side. The woeful interval had
been passed by them in alternate efforts on his part to
console the maiden, and to renew her shaken faith. Now,
in the weariness of her intense sorrow there was but one
thought that remained to her:—“If Helios be a God, he
will spare my godlike brother.” And the vehemence of
this assurance still upheld her.
The hours moved slowly on, and the heat became more
and more intense, so that those that stood within the
temple sickened and grew faint. And yet no cloudy veil
was spread in mercy, no breeze was made to fan the
heavy air. The fire of heaven burned fiercely, as if with
indignant ire.
The shadow of the altar dwindled till it fell only on
the very centre of the alcove.
Then the Pontiff once
more approached, and addressed his victim. “Dost thou
now adore the Omnipotent Helios ? ”
Orthinos raised his languid head, and once more cast
a glance around on the exquisitely-beautiful landscape,
—on the many well-loved ones whose hearts were now
agonizing for him,—on her, chiefly, who was the nearest
�21
and best loved. And his soul shrank from the blank
region of death, the dread expanse without a shore and
without a God:—and it struggled convulsively for life.
But on this side was a Lie. And his lips uttered the
firm resolve, “ Let me die I ”
Then the priests drew from amongst his instruments a
clear transparent circle, by the aid of which he had been
wont to regard the heavens. “ With this,” said the High
Priest, “ has he lifted presumptuous gaze to the mysteries
of heaven. Behold, what shall happen when the God in
like manner looks down upon him! ”
And they held it over the head of the victim. The
glowing beams were concentrated on his brow and pierced
direct to his brain. Sense and life were instantaneously
extinguished, and the stricken frame held Orthinos no
more.
What should have followed for a people thus robbed
of their noblest teacher but a bitter season of contention,
between those who admired him and those who con
demned:—between those who would have saved him with
their lives, and those who abhorred him with all their
souls ?
I see the image of my unhappy Selene, after she had
passed through the paroxysm of her anguish, reviving some
what into a gentle consolation, through the force of her
pure instincts. Her thoughts hovered ceaselessly over
the region where the spirit of her brother was now a
sojourner. Faith grew up for her out of love, and her
loving faith created or discovered a Heaven. Nor was
it long ere thither also her own spirit followed.
For the G-od-deprived island in general, however, in
creasing discord and increasing persecution raged long in
the manner of ujiholy demons:—until at last a great
�rT)dp.f>mhfir
22
solution was evolved. The conviction was brought forth
into a ripe truth, that undoubtedly is the soul of man
in itself a surer medium for the manifesting of Deity
than any exhibitor of mere physical glory.
And it
happened therefore, inevitably, that the repentant and
grateful countrymen of Orthinos turned to worship him
self as their God.
. With this consummation the history of the Heliadans
closed. Shortly after, their island was submerged by an
earthquake.
Sara S. Hennell.
Hackney, November, 1846.
�[This little tale is now printed with a view to private use.
The date attached to the manuscript copy is retained as a
necessary index; but none the less, as requires to be ack
nowledged, has the original version been subjected through
out, under present revision, to some measure of correction
of a slight kind.
The passage from Grote’s “Greece” which is referred to,
and which was the obvious source of the whole story’s com
position, is the following:----“After leaving Corcyra, the Argo was overtaken by a perilous storm
near the island of Thera: the heroes were saved from imminent peril by
the supernatural aid of Apollo, who, shooting from his golden bow an
arrow which pierced the waves like a track of light, caused a new island
suddenly to spring up in their track and present to them a port of refuge.
The island was called Anaphe; and the grateful Argonants established
upon it an altar and sacrifices to Apollo jEgletes, which were ever after
wards continued, and traced back by the inhabitants to this originating
adventure.”
8. 8. H.]
COVENTRY, March, 1884.
CURTIS AND BEAMISH, PRINTERS, COVENTRY.
�---- —"-- -—“--- “
------f---- .— 2*. Cl
rTianomllP.r
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Heliados a mythical legend
Creator
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Hennell, Sara Sophia
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Coventry
Collation: 22, [1] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Curtis and Beamish, Coventry. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1884
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CT61
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Mythology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Heliados a mythical legend), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Legends
Mythology
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
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The Edda songs and sagas of Iceland. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place on Sunday afternoon, 13th February 1876
Creator
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Browning, George
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 45, [3], p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Art-historical and ethnographical lectures
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Haymarket, London. Other works by the author, and a list of his Art-Historical & Ethnographical Lectures, afternoon meetings for 1876 given on unnumbered pages at the end. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1876
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G5169
N112
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Iceland
Mythology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Edda songs and sagas of Iceland. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place on Sunday afternoon, 13th February 1876), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Eddas
Iceland
NSS
Sagas
Songs
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599
JFiw-JdM flje
Ortass of Jobe.
Familiarity with the classical gods of Greece and Rome is considered a
matter-of-course accomplishment in polite education. To show ignorance
on that point, would render a person liable to be placed in the Kimmerian
circle of outer barbarians. But how few are there who have even so
much as a faint notion of the Germanic Pantheon, in which the creed of
that race was once embodied, from which Englishmen have in the main
sprung! “ Bay after day, as the weeks run round,” says the author of
Words and Places, the Rev. Isaac Taylor—“we have obtruded upon our
notice the names of the deities who were worshipped by our pagan fore
fathers. This heathenism is indeed so deeply ingrained into our speech that
we are accustomed daily to pronounce the names of Tiu, Woden, Thunor,
Frea, and Saetere. These names are so familiar to us that we are apt to
forget how little is really known of the mythology of those heathen times.”
Sun- and star-worship was, according to Roman testimony, among the
earliest forms of creed of the Germanic tribes. The dies Solis, and the
dies Luna, had therefore no difficulty in being translated into a Sun-day
and Moon- or Mon-day. In Tuesday we have the name of the Germanic
god of war, Tyr, Tiu, or Ziu—in some Teutonic dialects also called Era
or Erich, the root of which word is no doubt the same as in the Hellenic
Ares. Hence Tuesday, in High German Pinstag, is in some Alemannic
and Bavarian districts called Zistig, Erschtag, or Erichstag. Wodan, the
All-father, furnishes the name for Wednesday. Thursday is derived from
the God of Thunder. Friday represents the day of the Germanic Venus.
In Saturday, the derivation of which was formerly traced to Saturnus, a
god Saetere is probably hidden—that name being, to all appearance, an
aZius for Loki, or Lokko, the evil-doing god, of whose malicious mind the
Edda gives so graphic an account in the song called “ The Banquet of
Oegir” [Oegisdrekka e^a Lokasennai)—a Titanic satire upon the dwellers
in Asgard.
If we look over the topography of all countries in which the Germanic
race dwells, or through which it has passed in the course of its migrations,
what deep imprints do we find of its ancient creed in the very appellations
of dwelling-places ! The God of War ; the All-father who rules the winds
and the clouds; the God of Thunder; the Goddess of Love ; the deity
who represents insidious mischief and destruction—they are all to be met
with, not only in Germany, Scandinavia, and other Continental lands, but
on English soil, too, where Tewesley, Tewin, and Dewerstone; Wanborough, Wednesbury, Woodnesborough, Wansdike, and Woden Hill;
�600
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
Thundersfield, Thurscross, and Thurso; Frathorpe, Fraisthorpe, and
Freasley ; Satterleigh, and Satterthwaite, in all probability bear -witness to
a decayed cultus. Even so Balderby and Balderton ; Easterford, Easterleake, and Eastermear ; Hellifield, Hellathyrne, and Helagh, are no doubt
referable to the worship of Balder, the god of light and peace; of Eostre,
or Ostara, the goddess of Spring; of Hel, the mistress of the underworld.
And again, when in this country we meet with places called Asgardby and
Aysgarth, we have no difficulty in referring them to Asgard, the Germanic
Olympus.
Still, with all these traces of a pagan religion—which had its grandeur
and even some traits of charm—strewn thickly around us, how many are
there who think it worth while to read the thoughts of their own ancestors
in the mythic system so amply elaborated by them ? Among a large class
of people of highly cultivated mind, where are the readers of the powerful
text-book of heathen Germanic religion ? where the students of that folk
lore in which precious fragments of ancient creed are embedded, even as
glittering shells, of brilliant hue, are concealed beneath the incrustated
slime of the sea ?
Yet, on the mere plea of poetical enjoyment, an extended knowledge
of these subjects might be urged. Assuredly—as Mannhardt puts it, who
with Simrock, Kuhn, Schwarz, and others, has ably and laboriously
continued the immortal labours of Grimm, and of the many Norse scholars
—there is not, in the Germanic world of Gods, the perfect harmony and
plastic repose of the Olympian ideals of Greece. But their forms and
figures tower in lofty greatness through the immensity of space; and if
they are not so well rounded off as the deities of the later Greek epoch—
if they are somewhat apt to float, before the mind’s eye, like fantasticallyshaped storm-clouds, or like bright-coloured visions of dawn and sunset,
they are, on the other hand, less liable to be taken for mere idols of ivory,
brass, and stone.
Can it be said, however, that there is a lack of poetical conception in
the figure of Wodan, or Odin, the hoary god of the clouds, who, clad in
a flowing mantle, careers through the sky on a milk-white horse, from
whose nostrils fire issues ? Is there a want of artistic delineation in
Freia, who changes darkness into light wherever she appears—the
goddess with the streaming golden locks, and the siren voice, who hovers
in her snow-white robe between heaven and earth, making flowers sprout
along her path, and planting irresistible longings in the hearts of men ?
Do we not see in bold and well-marked outlines the figure of the redbearded, steel-handed Thor, who rolls along the sky in his goat-drawn car,
and who smites the mountain giants with his magic hammer ? Are these
dwellers in the Germanic Olympus mere spectres, without distinct con
tour ? And if their strength often verges upon wildness ; if their charms
are sometimes allied to cruel sorcery—are they not, even in their uncouth
passions, the representatives of a primitive race, in which the pulse throbs
with youthful freshness ?
�FEEIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
601
Again, what a throng of minor deities—surpassing in poetic conception
even Hellenic fancy—have been evolved by the Teutonic mind out of all
the forces of nature! Look at the crowd of fairies, and wood-women,
and elfin, and nixes, and dwarfs, and cobolds, that dance in the moon
light, and whisk through the rustling leaves, or dwell enchanted in trees,
or hide in glittering mountain-caves, or waft enthralling songs from
beneath the water, or bustle day and night through the dwellings of man!
The Greeks had all, or nearly all, this—for the elements of mythology
are the same in all Aryan lands : but there is a greater depth in the
corresponding Teutonic tales : they coil themselves round the heart like
invisible threads ; they seem so familiar and homely, and yet lead the
imagination into a strange dreamland.
Then, what a dramatic development Germanic mythology has ! The
Hellenic gods sit in ambrosian quiet in their lofty abodes ; they are
eternal gods, inaccessible to the corroding power of Time. True, there
are some faint indications of a final change when Jupiter himself is to
make place for a juster ruler. But, in the main, the deities of classic
antiquity live on in an unbroken, immortal life ; they are, as it has been
aptly said, like so many statues ranged along a stately edifice, each statue
perfect in itself—no idea of action, of tragic complication, arising out of
the whole.
How different is the Germanic view of the Universe! There, all is
action, struggle: and the world of gods itself is from the very beginning
destined to a catastrophe.. So long as the Aesir last, they are regarded as
the girders and pillars of the Universe. But at the end of time, the world
is to be consumed in a mighty conflagration ; the heavens and the earth
stand in a lurid blaze; Asgard and Walhalla, the abodes of gods and
heroes, are doomed to destruction; the Universe breaks down in a
gigantic crash :—
The sun darkens ;
Earth in Ocean sinks ;
From Heaven fall
The bright stars.
Fire’s breath assails
The all-nourishing Tree ;
' Towering flames play
Against Heaven itself.
That cataclysm shall be preceded by—
An axe-age, a sword-age ;
Shields shall be cloven—
A wind-age, a wolf-age,
Ere the world sinks !
Only after this terrible convulsion shall have ended, will there be
introduced a new and peaceful reign, with eternal bliss. Then the white
god of peace, whose death Loki had encompassed, will triumphantly
29—5
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
return. In the Voluspa, the prophetess foresees the coming of that
golden age—
She sees arise,
A second time,
Earth from Ocean,
Beauteously green ...
Unsown shall
The fields bring forth,
All evil be amended ;
Balder shall come,
Hoder and Balder,
The heavenly gods!
A mythic system of such poetic sublimity is as much worth being
studied as that of classic antiquity, or as the Hindoo Pantheon, where we
meet with the germs of the pagan religion of all Aryans. I have pro
posed to myself, in this present essay, to treat especially of Freia, who, in
Norse mythology, appears already divided into two distinct figures,
namely: Frigg, the consort of Odin; and Freyja, the goddess of love:
whilst among the Germans, properly speaking, Freia combines the
characters of Juno and of Venus—the motherly and the erotic element.
It may be prefaced here that, in the Norse system, a duodecimal series
of gods and goddesses is clearly discernible, to whom the figure of the
fiendish Loki is to be added. Germany, so rich in tales which contain the
ancient deities under a strange disguise, has in all probability had the same
duodecimal system of polytheism. Laborious researches strongly tend to
establish that hypothesis as a fact. .1 will not enter here more deeply into
this point to show the scientific mode of procedure, but will only quote a
passage from Max Muller’s work, which bears upon it. “ It might seem
strange, indeed,” he wrote, i£ that so great a scholar as Grimm should
have spent so much of his precious time in collecting his Mahrchen, if
those Mdlivchen had only been intended for the amusement of children.
When we see a Lyell or Owen pick up pretty shells and stones, we may
be sure that, however much little girls may admire these pretty things,
this was not the object which these wise collectors had in view. Like the
blue, and green, and rosy sands which children play with in the Isle of
Wight, those tales of the people, which Grimm was the first to discover
and collect, are the detritus of many an ancient stratum of thought and
language, buried deep in the past. They have a scientific interest.”
Out of a mass of such popular tales and traditions, the fair form of the
German Venus may be reconstructed with a great degree of certainty.
There is good ground for believing that the deities whom we afterwards
find in Asgard, gradually arose out of an elementary worship—that, like other
pagan gods, they are simply the result of a successive anthropomorphic
condensation of ideas connected with the worship of the forces of Nature,
and with cosmogonic speculations. That historical elements entered into
the formation of their divine images, I readily acknowledge. In fact, it
seems to me most probable that there is a mixed origin of all mythic
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603
figures. At any rate, the worship of the forces of Nature appears to be
the prevailing element in their composition ; and thus the first glimpse we
obtain of Freia, or Freia-Holda, shows her under the shape of a storm
goddess—that is, as the female counterpart of Wodan, the ruler of the
cloudy region, who was originally conceived as the storm himself—as the
dtma, or Great Breath, which pervades the universe.
Now, it speaks much for an early culture of the heart among the
Germanic race, that the vague idea of a storm-goddess should have so
swiftly become refined, as it actually did, into the form of Freia-Holda,
whose very name indicates friendliness, love, and benevolent grace. The
process of shaping and polishing the images of the other divinities of the
cloudy sky was a longer one. For a considerable time they seem to have
retained their floating and somewhat less circumscribed character. Even
when they had assumed that form which, under a more developed reign of
art, would have rendered them fit for sculptured representation, popular
fancy exhibited a marked inclination towards dissolving them, ever and
anon, into their aboriginal chaotic substance. Not so with Freia. Round
her, also, the most variegated myths clustered. Moreover, the various
attributes conferred upon her, were apt to give rise to a number of special
figures, ranging—extraordinary to say—from the typification of charms to
that of hideous witchcraft, from beauty to that of its very contrast.
Nevertheless, there is, as with the Greek deities, a clear, unmarred, central
picture, which shows Freia-Holda under an aspect of well-marked, noble
beauty. The mind of the people who revered her, fondly dwelt upon the
portraiture of her attractions and virtues, always adding new traits, and
elaborating it with fresh touches. Hence the mythic circle which
surrounds the worship of Freia, is in every respect one of the richest in
German folk-lore.
Lapse of time and local tradition have certainly given us a multiform
variety of Freia-Holda images. The Gods of Homer and Hesiod were not
exactly those of ¿Eschylus and Euripides. In the same way, the Germanic
Pantheon was not at all times fitted with the identical forms. The tribal
differences among the German race also went far to give a different
colouring to the original character of a deity. But even as we have a welldefined idea of the character and attributes of Jupiter, of Juno, of Mars,
of Venus, quite irrespective of the special myths, which vary considerably
according to time and locality, so also do we possess an average image
of Wodan, of Thunar, but most particularly of Freia.
Whilst other deities are heard in the tempest that bends the rustling
tree-tops of primeval forests, or hurriedly pass along the vault of Fleaven :
the Goddess of Love gladdens more visibly the glance of men, as she
glides slowly over flowery meadows, amidst a rosy sheen.
She is represented as being of entrancing beauty, with long-flowing,
thick, golden hair of great heaviness. Her body is snow-white; she is
©lad in a white garment, which spreads a rosy effulgence. On her
forehead hangs a single tangled lock of hair. She is covered, over her
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OE LOVE.
white robe, with a light veil, from head to foot. Round her neck she
wears a chain of shining jewels, from which a light streams forth, as of the
dawn of morn. Rose-bushes and willow-trees are her favourite resorts :
willow-trees overhanging crystal lakes. Her voice, full of melodious song,
enthralls men. Rs heavenly strains transport the listener to spheres of
unknown bliss ; he is drawn along, in rapture, in spite of his will. Whereever she walks, flowers sprout up on her path, and the merry sound of
golden bells is heard tinkling. A radiance of ethereal worlds follows
her footsteps. In the depth of night, the wanderer who has lost his way,
guides his walk after her beneficent apparition. The fields over which she
passes, are blessed with fruit.
About Twelfth-night time—that is, at the winter solstice—when the
German tribes were accustomed to celebrate one of their sun-worship rites,
Freia-Holda visits the households, looking after the industry of the maidens
at the spinning-wheel. She is the goddess of amorousness, but also of
housewifely accomplishments. She has a virgin-like appearance; in her
qualities, however, the two womanly elements are blended.
Her
residence is beyond the azure skies, in a sunny region behind the clouds ;
limpid waters divide her reign from the outer world. There she dwells
in a garden, where fragrant flowers and luscious fruits grow, and the song
of birds never ceases.
On the meadows, and amidst the foliage of that garden, the souls
of the Unborn—whose protectress Freia is—are playing their innocent,
unconscious games, gathering food from the chalices of flowers, until the
heavenly messenger comes who calls them into human birth. In that
garden, there is also the Fountain of Rejuvenescence—the Jungbrunnen
or Quickborn, where the sources of life are incessantly renovated, and
decrepit age once more changes into blooming youth.
Such, with a few strokes, is the image of the Goddess whose worship
was most deeply rooted among our forefathers—so much so, that it was
found impossible to overthrow her reign except by a substitution which
preserved the substance of her attributes.
Indeed, the German Mariolatry of the middle ages is to a large degree
traceable to these previous heathen customs. There are a number of
highly coloured hymns to the Virgin, the imagery of which is almost
literally taken from similar Freia songs, fragmentary pieces of which latter
have come down to us in children’s rhymes. Many of these hymns would
be perfectly unintelligible if we did not know the poetical surroundings of the
pagan goddess. Freia, the Queen of the Heavens, the sorrowing mother
of Balder, that god of peace who met with his death through the traitor
Loki, was transfused into the Mater dolorosa, the ‘ ‘ Mother of God ” of
the Roman Church; but in this transfusion she retained much of her
original character. However, in order to create a division-line, a notion
was fostered that Freia’s day, Friday—originally the favourite marriageday—was an unlucky day ; a superstition which prevails to this moment
arqong large numbers of uneducated people. Nevertheless, there are some
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605
Woks and corners where, even now, Friday is regarded as the proper
wedding-day—clearly a remnant of the old religion.
It was “ das ewig Weiblichef the worship of which the Germanic race
tenaciously clung to, though under strange forms of superstition. Out of
this frame of mind grew up the chivalric view about womankind, which in
Germany had its lyric representation in the poetry of the minnesinger.
The fervour with which that view was held, often assumed the shapeof an abstract principle, leading to the most ardent evolutions of thought
and sentiment, quite irrespective of individual passion and amatory
reality. It would be an error to suppose that aristocratic chivalry had
created this whole world of woman-worship. It was a trait characteristic
of the Germanic races as such—even at a time when they were only
just emerging into historical light. The early Roman authors mention
the veneration in which womankind was held by our forefathers. The
ancient Germans ascribed to woman a kind of sacred and prophetic
character.—(Tacitus, Germ., cap. viii.) And, no doubt, the institution
of monogamy, which was but occasionally broken through by the aris
tocratic chieftains ; the influence exercised not only by the priestesses
and prophetesses, such as Aurinia and Veleda, but by the German women
in general : an influence of persuasion, of wise counsel, and of heroic,
patriotic conduct, not an influence obtained by equality of political rights
■—all this points to the fact of an early development of more tender
sentiments, of which the Freia cultus was the religious outcome.
The name of the goddess appears in different forms, as Freia, Friia,
Frea, Frigga, Frikka, Frikk. It is traceable to a root meaning “to
love.” In Gothic, frijon means “ to love; ” hence the German
“Freund,” friend; hence, perhaps, also “freien,” to woo, and Frau.
In Low German, the verb “friggen ” is still extant, in the sense of “ to
love.” Thus Freia is a loving, befriending divinity; and through the
fertilising character,' naturally connected with these qualities, as well as
through the sunny effulgence which envelops her attractive picture, she
easily merges into the form of Ceres. There are indications, at least, that
she may have been revered also as a goddess of agriculture, and that
healing powers were attributed to her. Her sister was Voila (Fulness),
of whom we get a glimpse in the famous incantation song of Merseburg
*
—a divinity evidently typifying the abundance of Nature.
I have endeavoured, out of a confusing wealth of legends, to draw
the form of Freia in clear colours, choosing that type which the goddess
must have assumed at a certain period in the early life of the German
nation, when vague conceptions about the struggle of elementary forces
had been fused into more plastic expression, whilst the process of decay
and deterioration had not yet set in, which afterwards reduced the figure
of Freia-Holda to that of a mere sorceress, nay, even hag. But how,
* It begins with the words :— •
Phol ende Uodan
Vuoron zi holza,
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
it will be asked, was the goddess of love and domestic virtue wrought from
the crude idea of a divinity of the clouds who flits along the horizon ?
As the wife of the storm-god Wodan, she is, in the early form of the
tale, chased by him, even as the cloud is by the wind. Minor cloud
goddesses, or cloud-women, environ her; in some myths they are con
ceived as horses or swans.
They are the swift-running, fast-sailing
clouds, of sombrer or of more silvery hue. The flight of the goddess from
before her consort, and the representation of her companions as mares,
remind us of the Hindoo myth, in which a similar female deity flies before
the Ruler of the skies in the shape of a mare.
Soon the tale assumes a more poetic form; It is now no longer the
Ruler of the skies who chases his stormy spouse ; but, by an inversion not
unfrequent in the process of mythological formation, it is henceforth she
who wanders, wailing and in tears, over hill and dale in search of her
long-lost lover. The lamenting wind and the rain, which were connected
with the notion of a tempest-deity, are here converted into the plaints and
the weeping of the longing goddess. The howling storm softens into
loving grief, and the somewhat dark and dim deity which represented the
first, necessarily undergoes a corresponding transfiguration.
The same is the case with her cloudy retinue. The white and silvery
specks on the welkin come to the foreground; from swans, under which
form they were at first conceived, they change into swan-virgins. Nor do
they career or sail along the sky any more. They now act as the
embellishing suite of the loving goddess, who, after having scarcely met
with her eagerly-sought friend, loses him once more, and has, Isis-like, to
start on a new heart-rending peregrination. It would appear that the
ever-repeated change of the junction and the separation of the productive
and receptive faculties in nature is here shadowed forth under the guise
of loving satisfaction and grief. In this gradual alteration of imagery,
the successive humanization of the character of the myth is clearly
discernible.
Later on—I will here remark in passing—when the period of mythic
decay arrives, the early form and'character of the swan-virgins is entirely
lost. Of the swan, nothing then remains but the foot, which is tacked on
to the body of an elf, or even a gnome. The tales in which swan’s feet
occur, are very valuable for the attentive inquirer. The imprint of these
birds' feet serves as a trace leading back to the sanctuary of the Teutonic
Aphrodite, and thus helps to reconstruct our knowledge of the once wide
spread cultus.
To look upon the sky as a “ sea of ether,” as a“ heavenly ocean”—
samudra in Sanskrit—is an ancient Vedic notion. Freia, who resides
beyond the azure sky, at the bottom of a crystal well, is, however, in
more than one sense a water-goddess, for she belonged originally to that
circle of Vana-deities who in Norse tradition are said to have been
engaged in a long and fierce struggle with the Asa-gods, until peace was
concluded between the rival and hostile dynasties of gods, when Freia, with
�FBEIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
607
some others, was received into Asgard. Whether this tale refers to two
different cosmogonic systems held by different races in pre-historic times,
or whether it marks a religious struggle among separate Germanic tribes,
it is impossible now to decide. But the original character of Freia-Holda
as a water-goddess of the Vana-circle is still apparent in the fairy tale,
current to this day among the German peasantry, about 11 Frau Hoile,”
who is represented as walking up a hill with a golden, bottomless pail, a
kind of Danaides tub, from which water incessantly flows.
In another tale, Frau Hoile is said, when it snows, to have spread and
shaken her white mantle. It is the white robe which the Germanic god
dess once wore. Again, when white, shimmering cloudlets—called to this
day “lambs” (Lämmer) in German—make their appearance, Hoile is
said to drive her flock.
The former character of the protectress of
agriculture appears in this form of the legend.
The sunny attributes of the original water-goddess linger in another
legend, which says that when there has been rain during the whole week,
it is expected to cease on Friday—Freia’s day—when Frau Hoile has to
dry her veil, which she spreads for that purpose over rose-bushes and
willows, the trees anciently sacred to that northern Venus. In the same
way, the conception of Freia as a solar deity lingers in a Low German
children’s rhyme, which, though slightly deteriorated, describes with
wonderful fidelity the heavenly abode of the goddess in all its typical
particulars. In that rhyme, the water-carrying goddess, who walks up
the hill with the golden bucket, is called “ the little sun,”—
Wo dat sönneken den berg herop geit.
In German children’s rhymes, tales, plays, and dances, the last shreds
and fragments of the old heathen system of religion are wonderfully pre
served. The rhymes constitute a sort of poetised mythology for the use
of the nursery. They are the traditionary oral catechism of a creed which
is no longer understood. The Freia worship ; the adoration of the Nomes,
the weird Sisters of Fate ; the belief in a coming downfall of Asgard;—
all these pagan notions have left their vestiges in childish ditties. The
quaint Cockchafer ditties, to which I have yet to allude, are among the
most important in this respect. It is often difficult to sort out the mere
dross which has crept in by the misapprehension of words, leading to new
associations of ideas, in which the original meaning of the myth disap
pears. Yet these infantile songs, often apparently devoid of sense, are a
rich mine, from which ancient forms of religious thought may be dug out.
One of these rhymes runs thus :
Mutter Gottes thut Wasser tragen
Mit goldenen Kannen
Aus dem goldenen Brünnei.
Da liegen Viel' drinne.
Sie legt sie auf die Kissen,
Und thät sie schön wiegen
Auf der goldenen Stiegen.
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
The “ golden buckets ” of Freia are, in this ditty, already carried by
the “ Mother of God.” The mother of Balder, of the transfixed deity
■who has died, but who will hereafter introduce a millennium of peace, is,
under Roman Catholic influence, changed into Mutter Gottes. But her
heathen paraphernalia still cling to her. She still resides in the golden,
or sunlit, well. She is still the water-goddess; and “the many that are
lying ” in her celestial abode, behind the azure waves of the ethereal
ocean, are still the Unborn who dwell in Freia’s fragrant domain.
If we follow that train of ideas, in which Freia was regarded as a
representative of warmth, of light, of fire, we find it fabled that the
souls of the Unborn, when awaiting their human embodiment, are carried
earthwards in flashes of lightning. The soul, in other words, was con
sidered a heavenly ray or flash. In connection with this idea is the
sanctification of many things and beings who, on account of their colour
being that of lightning,—namely, red,—are received into the special
service of the Goddess of the Unborn. The red-billed and red-legged
stork and the red-winged lady-bird must here specially be mentioned.
They were once nearly worshipped. A halo of inviolability still protects
in Germany the stork. The lady-bird also continues to be held, by
children at least, in some sort of friendly reverence.
The lady-bird was supposed to aid in carrying, on its red wings, the
souls of children to their terrestrial destination. The very name “ lady
bird” points to the former goddess: the “Lady” originally was the
Germanic Queen of the Heavens, for whom the Virgin Mary was afterwards
substituted. In a Low-German dialect, the lady-bird is called Mai-Katt
(May-cat), which name points to the time of the year that was sacred to
Freia, and to the cat, a team of whom drew the car of the goddess.
*
Other names are : Sonnenkalb, Sonnenkdfer, Sonnenhithnchen, SonnemcendKafer, bringing us back to Freia’s sunny domain. The lady-bird is also
called Marien-Kafer, from the Virgin Mary; or lastly, Herrgotts-Kdfer,
the Lord (Herrgott') being, in this case, substituted for the Lady, a trans
position frequently observable in mythology, the male and female forms of
the ruling spirit of the Universe (“ Woden ” and “ Frau Gaude ”) often
taking each other’s place.
There is a Suabian song, in which the lady-bird {Herrgotts-Moggela') is
called upon to fly into heaven, there to fetch, on a golden basin, a golden
baby. In other tales, children are supposed to come from a “hollow
tree ”—aus holdem Baum, or aus dem Ilollenbaum. This strange notion
of the origin of mankind from the vegetable reign, which appears in
* There is a children’s rhyme in the Austrian dialect, representing the cat as going
to Hollabrunn,—that is, the well of Holda—where she finds a baby “in the sun.”
The Freia-Holda worship, in its bearings upon a Neptunic and a solar cultus, is in
this verse given in a few quaint words :—
Hop, hop, Heserlmann!
Unsa Katz hat Stieferln an,
Rennt damit nach Hollabrunn,
Findt a Kindla in da Sunn!
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609
Wrious German doggrels, is to be met with also among the ancient Greeks,
aS the saying shows : “ ou yap airo bpvoQ tart iraXaityarov ovS’ airo irkrpriQ.” In
the “ hollow ” tree we have, however, unquestionably Holda’s, or Hoile’s,
¡tree, on whose branches the unborn sat.
We shall afterwards see how a similar deterioration of terms led to the
idea of Holda as a witch who was charming in the face, but hollow in the
back, similar to an excavated stem with gnarly bark. In Hessian trials of
witches, long after the middle ages, we read of “ FrawHolt ” under such a
description ; the name of Holda, Hoile, or Holt, having, by a double
assimilation of sounds, given rise to the comparison of the sorceress with
a hollow tree—holt or holz signifying wood or tree. The corruption of
words is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of new mythical
formations.
Even as the lady-bird, so the stork also was in the service of Freia.
His red colours, too, made him the representative of lightning, of electricity,
of the principle of vivification. He helped in carrying the souls of the
unborn earthwards. His mythic name, therefore, was “Adebar” or
“ Odebar ”—carrier of children, bringer of souls. Even now, he has that
name in various German dialects ; but its meaning is obliterated or
obscured in the popular memory.
As the typification of the spark of heaven, the stork was connected
with sun-worship. Hence, he was doubly sacred to our forefathers,
and is still partly so to our village folk, who frequently place a wheel for
him on house-tops and chimneys, that he may the more commodiously
build his nest on them. In solar worship, the wheel particularlyrepresents
the orb of the sun. It is used as such in the solstice-fires (SonnenwendFeuer), which German peasants light to this day amidst great jubilation.
When the peasant boys of Upper Bavaria and the Tyrol roll their
tarred wheels, which are set on fire, in the dark night down the mountains,
making them describe most wonderful gyrations, they sing songs in honour
of their loves. There are set rhymes to that effect, which have been
handed down through generations, and in which, according to the occasion,
the name of the particular sweetheart has only to be inserted. The solar
8>nd the Aphroditean cultus of Freia were blended in early mythology;
the traces of this connection are yet visible in such boorish merryBiakings !
So late down as the sixteenth century, the Roman Church thought it
advisable to take the heathen myth of Freia’s well, within which the
unborn are playing, and of Adebar the bringer of children, under its own
protection. So-called Kindlein's-Brunnen, to which women proceeded, in
ftrder to drink the consecrated water, were erected, or changed into holy
places of the Catholic Church, in many towns and villages of Germany.
Bishop John, of Saalhausen, had a chapel built, in 1512, over one of
these old places of Freia worship. Numbers of women congregated there,
doing reverence to the “ holy and chaste virgin at the Fountain of Life ”
{Qu&ckbrunneri). The weather-vane of the chapel was a stork, who carried
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FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
a child in his bill—even as is still to be seen in the toys of German
children, who are much given to the notion that a fresh arrival of a brother
or sister is due to the obliging stork.
The cockchafer, too, seems to have been a hallowed insect of yore. It
is called Mai-Käfer in German, from the period of the year when it gene
rally comes first out of the ground ; and that period, as said before, was
the sacred time of the Goddess of Love. German children have a custom
of placing that beetle on their left hand, to which they generally attach it
by a thread, and then they sing a verse the meaning of which has long
puzzled investigators. Mannhardt has collected quite a variety of such
verses, all taken direct from the lips of German boys, in order to prove
that they refer to that final catastrophe when the gods and their giant
antagonists are warring with each other, and the Asa-world collapses in a
fearful tumult and universal conflagration. All the rhymes collected until
now make it extremely probable that they refer to the danger which
envelops, and finally destroys, Holda’s reign. Still, Mannhardt was not
able to give any verse in which her name is distinctly traceable.
Now, in the same way, it had formerly been rendered very probable
that all the Holda myths were Freia myths ; Holda being simply one of
the appellatives of the Goddess, which had branched out into a well-nigh
identical form. For a while, the hypothesis of the original identity of the
two forms seemed unsubstantiated. At last, however, in a Latin manu
script preserved at Madrid, the name of the deity was discovered in the
form “ Friga-Holda,” when the substantial unity of the two mythic
figures was placed beyond doubt.
Even so, I believe I can supply the missing link in regard to the
curious Cockchafer Songs, which are of such high mythological interest.
I distinctly remember a ditty sung by children, in which the cockchafer is
bidden to fly to his father (presumably Wodan, the consort of FreiaHolda),who is said to be “ at war,” and to his mother who is “in Holler
land,” where a conflagration has broken out, which consumes Holler
land :—
Maikäfer, flieg’!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Hollerland—
Hollerland ist abgebrannt!
Iuchhe1
The latter joyful exclamation may be supposed to be the Christian
“ Io triumphe," the utterance of joy over the destruction of the heathen
Asa-world. I need scarcely remind the reader that the song which is sung
in Germany about the cockchafer, is also sung in some parts of this
country about the lady-bird. (“ Lady-bird, lady-bird, hie thy way home !
Thy house is on fire I Thy children all roam ! ” Or : “ Lady-bird, lady
bird, fly away home ! Your house is on fire ! Your children will burn! ”
See, for instance, Jamieson’s Northern Antiquities.')
In the folk-lore still current in Germany, the name of “ Freia ” is only
�FREÏA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
611
preserved yet among the people of the Ukermark and the Altmark. Other
wise, we meet with it in some Suabian, Franconian, Alemannic, and Lower
Saxon designations of villages, and different places, where her worship
once flourished. Thus there are several Frickenhausen, situated near
lakes—quite in keeping with the myth which makes the Goddess haunt
the water, even as Aphrodite rose from the waves of the sea. In other
parts of Germany the goddess is called Holda ; Frau Gode, Gauden, or
Gaue (that is, Woden’s wife, the “W” being changed into “G”—even
as war, in old-German werra, becomes, in French, guerre'); or Frau
Hera, or Harke ; Mother Rose ; Perchta, or Bertha. All these seemingly
distinct fairy figures arose from the personification of Freia’s attributes
and appellatives.
There is a multiform mass of legends, of a mixed heathen and Chris
tian character, in which the image of Freia is recognisable under the
oddest masks. As “Mother Rose” she has been received into the
legendary circle of the Roman Church. But why, many will wonder,
should the Virgin pass under the name of Mother Rose ? I forego
entering into the etymological explanation, which traces that name to a
cognomen of Freia, and will only mention an old pagan sorcery song,
clearly referable to that goddess, which says :—•
Kam eine Jungfer aus Engelland;
Eine Rose trug sie in ihrer Hand.
This “Engelland” is not, as some misunderstand it, England, but
the land of the white elfs, the fairyland of Freia. The “ Jungfer,” or
Virgin, who reigns over it, became the Virgin Mary; and the favourite
flower of the German goddess of love was converted into a symbol of the
Madonna.
As Mother Rose, Freia appears in a Christianised garb. But under
the names of Holda, Gode, Hera, and Perchta, she preserves, in the
tales, her heathen character as a fay—in a good or an evil sense. Most
astonishing are the transformations she undergoes under these various
appellations. Even as the storm-god Wodan, who led the departed
heroes into Walhalla, became changed, after the introduction of Chris
tianity, into a wild huntsman who careers along the sky with his ghostly
retinue, so Freia-Holda also becomes a wild huntress, who hurries round
at night with the unfortunate souls. Through this same association with
hobgoblin devilry, she is converted into a Mother Haule, or Ilaule-mutter,
a howling utterer of mournful wails about the dead. By way of direct
contrast, the once white-robed goddess with the snow-white body changes,
as Hera, into a white dove, a typification of loving innocence. At a first
glance, such quid pro quo's and metamorphoses into the very opposite
would appear incredible; but he who has studied the effect of misapprehended words and sounds upon the untutored mind of man will not be
astonished at these changeling substitutions.
The way in which the souls of the unborn were supposed to be called
from Freia s garden, is to this day represented in various children’s games
�612
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
in Germany, by words and expressive mimicry.
In the Perchta, or
Bertha myths, that linger in some secluded valleys, the crowd of the
unborn still appear as a suite of elfs, called Heimchen, who follow the
goddess. The Perchta legends are of a somewhat wild—occasionally
Bacchantic and Korybantic—-character, in which the gloomy element is,
however, not wanting. The goddess, who once typified the purest beauty,
assumes in them rather motley and multiform shapes : there are beautiful
Perchtas as well as “ wild- Perchteln,” the latter with a satyr-like appear
ance, running about with dishevelled hair. The Bacchantic and Korybantic
character of the goddess appears even from a passage in Luther’s writings.
He calls her, not Perchta, but with her softer name, “Frau Hulda,”
makes a Dame Nature of her, who rebels against her God, and describes
her as “ donning her old rag-tag livery, the straw-harness, and singing
and dancing whilst fiddling on the violin ” (liengt um sick iren alten trewdelmarkt, den stroharnss, Jiebt an und scharret daher mit irer geigen). The
straw-harness may be supposed to symbolize the former character of the
Teutonic Cythere as a Ceres, a goddess of productiveness and fertility in
every sense.
Representations of the Perchta myth have until lately been going on,
at stated times of the year, among the peasantry of Southern Germany;
and are, no doubt, still in vogue here and there. Near Salzburg, a
“Perchtel” is represented, in such masquerades, with a sky-blue dress,
wearing a crown of tinkling bells, and singing in highly jubilant manner.
The goddess, or fairy, here shows something of a vulgivaga character; a
trait cropping up already in the Eddie Hyndlu-Song.
The decay of the Freia myth may be said to have begun when her
powers of entrancing men made her to be looked upon as a dangerous
sorceress, as the incarnation of witchcraft. Still, before the goddess
simply became a hag—an ole Moder Tarsclie, that is, Old Mother Sorceress
—popular fancy wove some charming legends about her magic qualities.
On the banks of the river Main, there are Hulli-steine, Holda’s stones, or
hollow stones, on which a fairy form sits at night, bewailing the loss of
her betrothed one who has left her. There she sits, sunk in sorrow,
shedding tears over the rock until it is worn down and becomes hollowed
out. In another Franconian tale, the bewitching fay sits on a rock in the
moon-light, when the bloom of the vine fills the mountains and the valleys
with sweet ffagrancy; she is clad in a white, shining garment, pouring
forth heart-enthralling songs. The children, in those parts of the country,
are warned not to listen to the seductive voice, but ardently to pray their
pater-noster, lest they should have to remain with “ Holli ” in the wood
until the Day of Judgment. From this legend, Heine took the subject
of his Lorelei song, transplanting it from the Main to the Rhine. Holda
appears, in this Franconian version, with faintly-indicated surroundings
of a Bacchic nature ; and her abode is described as “in the wood,
whither many pagan deities were relegated after Christianity had obtained
the upper-hand.
�FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
613
Some myths of later growth convert Freia into a “Venus ” who has
lost all the attributes of domestic virtue, connected with the earlier image
of the goddess ; nay, into a sort of grim Lakshmi, half Venus, half infernal
deity, who sits in a mountain cave, where there is much groaning of souls
suffering damnation. Other legends, though painting her as a she-devil,
do not depict the “ Venusinne ’’-grotto as a place of torment, but rather
as one of magic attractiveness, from which even the repentant sinner, who
has been allowed to leave it for a pilgrimage to Rome, cannot break loose
for ever.
This view of the abode of Venus we get in the famed
Tannhäuser legend, about which we possess various ancient poems, dating
from the fifteenth century.
The identity of the German Venus legends with the Freia-Holda
cycle is proveable from various facts. There is a “Venus-Berg” in
Suabia, situated close to a “ Hollenhof.” In a Swiss version of the
Tannhäuser song, Frau Venus is called “Frau Frene,” a name evoking
the memory of Frea or Freia. The IIorseel-Berg, near Eisenach, an old
place of Freia worship, was especially pointed out as containing the under
ground abode of Venus. And in the same way as Wodan’s wife, when
she left the mountain at midnight, as a wild huntress, with her army of
souls, was preceded by a grey-bearded man, the trusty Eckhart, who with
a white staff warned off all people not to obstruct the path of the goddess ;
so also Venus, when she leaves the mountain, is preceded by the trusty
Eckhart. The identity is therefore fully established.
To complete the picture of strange transformations, I ought to speak
of Freia-Bertha becoming the Ahn-frau and the ueisse Frau of German
princely families and royal castles. The presiding female deity of the
Asa-dynasty is changed into the ancestress of kings who, with the pride of
rulers by right divine, trace their pedigree to celestial origin. In the same
way, the white-robed goddess, who once exercised a powerful influence, is
metamorphosed into a spectral “ woman in white,” whose appearance
foretells the coming of great events, or is even a harbinger 'of royal death.
I will not treat here of the curious chapter of Berthas, ancestresses- of
kings, who were represented as swan-footed, flat-footed, large-footed, or
club-footed, a characteristic which brings us back to the bevy of swan
damsels who surrounded Freia. I will only, in conclusion, speak of the
strange transfiguration of Holda into a Hel, of a goddess of Love into
a goddess of Death, whose name afterwards furnished the designation for
the infernal region, or hell.
And here it is first to be observed that Hel, the Germanic mistress of
the under-world, originally was a mother of life, like Holda, as well as a
mother of death. Her natne, which comes from lielen or hehlen—in
Latin celare—indicates that she is a deity who works in darkness and
secrecy. Hence, she represents, in the beginning, the forces of nature
that are active beneath the hiding soil. Consequently, she is not, properly
speaking, destructive ; she rather aids in nature’s rejuvenation. She
typifies the idea of life emerging from death, and of death being only a
�614
FREIA-HOLDA, THE TEUTONIC GODDESS OF LOVE.
transformation of life. In the Edda, Hel is half dark or livid, half of the
hue of the human skin (bld half en half me# horundur lit); similar to the
Hindoo Bhavani or Maha Kali, the mother of nature and life, the goddess
who creates and destroys, the representative of love and of death, whose
face alternately is radiant with beauty, like that of Aphrodite, or expressive
of hideous terrors. In her beneficent quality, Bhavani carries a lotos
flower in her hand, even as Freia the rose ; and the waters of the Ganges
murmur her praise, as crystal lakes may have done that of the Germanic
deity. In her destroying and avenging character, the Hindoo goddess is
Kali the bloodthirsty, who rides a hellish horse. So Holda is converted
into a fiendish Hel.
Thus the images of life and death, of creation and destruction, of
beauty and of horrors, touch each other in a mysterious twilight. It is
an idea which may be followed through many religious systems ; for is
not Apollo also, the sunny'god, a typification of the pernicious power as
well as of ideal beauty ? and does not his very name bear the trace of the
destructive force ascribed to him ? The deep meaning contained in these
contradictory combinations attaches also to the mythological fancies of our
ruder forefathers ; and though it may sometimes be difficult to grasp the
sense that is enclosed in the veiling legends, they have, irrespective of
the philosophical significance which they struggle to express, a poetical
merit of their own, often exhibiting a bold and many-coloured imagery,
and a power of fashioning forms, such as we are wont to admire in the
products of classic antiquity.
KARL BLIND.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Freia-Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love
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Blind, Karl [author]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 599-614 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the Cornhill Magazine 25 (May 1872). Attribution from Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[1872]
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Mythology
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Conway Tracts
Freia-Holda
Germany
Goddesses
Mythology
Paganism
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Text
ALCE8TI8 IN ENGLAND
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
FINSBURY.
JANUARY 21,
1877.
BY
MONCURE D.
Price 2d.
CONWAY.
��ALCESTIS IN ENGLAND.
Not long ago the Alcestis of Euripides was pro
duced at the Crystal Palace, with- accompaniment of
beautiful music by an English composer, Mr. Henry
Gadsby. The large audience was profoundly interested,
and evinced genuine sympathy with all that was
noble, and abhorrence of what was base, in the
characters and action brought before them. The event
has appeared to me significant. Alcestis is one of
the few ancient Greek melodramas. The majority of
dramas left us by the poets of Greece turn upon
religious themes, and usually they are tragedies. It
is evident that to them the popular religion around
them was itself a tragedy. Their heroes and heroines
—such as Prometheus and Macaria—were generally
victims of the jealousy or caprice of the gods ; and
�though the poets display in their dramas the irresistible
power of the gods, they do so without reverence for
that power, and generally show the human victims
to be more honourable than the gods. But the Alcestis
of Euripides is not a tragedy : it ends happily, and in
the rescue of one of those victims of the gods. It
stands as about the first notice served on the gods
that the human heart had got tired of their high
handed proceedings, and they might prepare to quit
the thrones of the universe unless they could exhibit
more humanity.
The story of Alcestis opens with the decree of
the Fates that a certain man, Admetus, shall die.
But Apollo, who had been befriended by Admetus,
asks the Fates to spare him. The Fates say they
are willing, provided any one can be found to die in
his place ; for the powers below have been promised
their victim and must not be cheated, though it does
not matter whether their victim be Admetus or
somebody else. Upon this, Alcestis, the wife of
Admetus, steps forward and offers to die in his stead.
Admetus accepts this vicarious arrangement, but Apollo
feels that it is a rather mean affair; so when Death
comes to claim Alcestis, Apollo tries to argue the
case with him. But Death plants himself upon the
principle of divine justice. The notion of justice
among the gods is, that either the sentenced culprit
shall die or else some innocent person for him.
�5
Apollo is too well read in heavenly law to dispute this
code, but he is rather ashamed of it, and then follows
something peculiar. Knowing that neither he nor any
other deity can legally resist the decree of another
deity, Apollo is reduced to hope for help from man.
Human justice may save where divine justice sacrifices.
He prophesies to Death that although he may seize
Alcestis, a man will come who will conquer him, and
deliver that woman from the infernal realm. There
is then a pathetic scene in which Alcestis dies, making
her last request to her husband to devote himself to
her children, and reminding him of the happiness she
had left in her father’s palace to share his destiny,
and at last die for him. But, now, when she is dead,
Admetus’ father, Pheres, bitterly reproaches his son
for accepting life on such base terms as the death of
another. The people generally reproach him in the
same way, and at length Admetus feels that he has
acted a disgraceful part, and his life so unworthily
saved becomes worthless and miserable.
Then Hercules comes on the scene. He has been
slaying lion and dragon, and he now resolves to
conquer Death and deliver Alcestis. This he does ;
he descends into Hades, and delivers her from prison.
He brings her to her husband amid the general
joy.
There are several points in the story which present
a significant parallelism to the very letter of the legend,
�6
that arose some centuries later, of Christ’s descent into
Hell. For instance, when the rescued and risen
Alcestis is brought into the presence of Admetus he
cannot recognise her : she has yet too much that is
ghostly about her. Hercules tells Admetus it is not
lawful for her to speak to him “ until she is unbound
from her consecration to the gods beneath, and the
third day come.” So we see whence this idea of
rising on the third day is derived, and what notions
surrounded him who reported Jesus as at first not
recognised by Maiy, and then as saying to her, “ Touch
me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”'
The consecration of Hades was still upon him.
However, it is not to such details as these that I
wish to call your attention. It is more important to
consider that the entire drama turns upon the same
principles as the popular religion of England. It
only requires a change of names to make Alcestis a
Christian Passion-play. We have in it the unappeas
able law of Fate corresponding to the divine decree,
by which Jehovah himself was so fettered that there
could be no remission of sentence without the shed
ding of blood. We have the barbaric notion that
justice is satisfied by the vicarious suffering of anyone
at all, willing to sacrifice himself for the person in
volved punishment by proxy. And then, we have a
being who is a god in power, but man in heart: the
god-man Hercules, whose father was Jupiter, but
�7
whose mother was a woman, Alcmene ; and this in
carnate son of God vanquishes the infernal powers,
where a mere deity was powerless to do so on account
of the heavenly etiquette, and the gods’ peculiar notion
of justice.
The god-man Hercules went through the earth
■destroying earthly evils in twelve great Labours. The
legend was one of the most widespread and impres
sive throughout the Greek and Roman world at the
time of the establishment of Christianity. From the
old pictures of Christ’s triumphal pilgrimage on earth,
parallels to the chief labours of Hercules may be
found. Christ is shown treading on the lion, the asp,
the dragon, and Satan; and all the myths converge
in his conquest of Death and Hell. In the old
pictures of Christ delivering souls from Hades, Eve is
generally shown coming out first in suggestive simi
larity to Eurydice following Orpheus, and Alcestis
Hercules.
Such Greek myths mark an ascent of the human
mind above the idea of their early theology, which had
become a sort of pagan Calvinism. The advanced
minds had plainly grown ashamed of gods who
reigned with such an unjust idea as that of vicarious
.suffering; and Euripides dealt with the notion just as a
Freethinker now deals with the same. The audience
at the Crystal Palace applauded Pheres when he
■denounced his own son for the meanness of accepting
�8
salvation through the suffering of another. What
they applauded was an attack on the Christian scheme
of redemption. Pheres only anticipated James Marti
neau, who once similarly rebuked the baseness of those
who would not rather go to hell than be saved by the
death and suffering of an innocent being. What would
the audience have said to Pheres’ sentiment, if it had
been told them that they themselves were so many
Admetuses, accepting safety at the cost of the innocent
Alcestis of Calvary ? What, if they had been reminded
that the principle represented by Death, that justioe
is satisfied by so much suffering without respect to
who is the sufferer, is precisely the same as that by
which Christianity declares that the divine law required
a victim, but was quite satisfied if the innocent suffer
for the guilty ? The audience would, perhaps, have
regarded such suggestions with horror, and yet they
applauded the principle by which Christianity is now
assailed. We need not complain of this. It is much
to congratulate ourselves upon that in Art, at least,
we may have high and noble principles brought before
the people, and responded to by them. It is much
that a miserable superstition, though it may have
enfeebled the moral sentiment of the people, has not
yet eaten into their heart and instinct so far as to make
them really put darkness for light, and honour disease
as health.
In the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter stood just
�9
where Jehovah stood in the Jewish religion. They
were both stern, jealous, vindictive deities,—personi
fications of thunder and lightning,—with no humanity
about them. Gradually, the Greeks became ashamed
of Jupiter, and they began to worship heroes who had
human hearts,—such as Hercules. In the same way,
in another line of development, men became ashamed
of Jehovah, and had to set up the human-hearted
Christ instead of him. In the early days when the
worship of Christ meant an appeal against deified
despotism, it w’as a healthy and noble worship. But
that was before there was anything in the world called
Christianity. Christianity was the overthrow of Christ.
It was the invention of a priesthood who found that
this novel idea of Christ, that God is Love, sending
sunshine alike on good and evil, would prove fatal to
their power. For their purpose men must be terrified.
So they contrived and intrigued until they unseated
Christ with his Gospel of Love, by tacking on to him
the discredited Jove and Jehovah, and setting their
lightnings to work again. They were but too success
ful. He who came “not to condemn but to save”
was made into an awful Judge of the quick and dead.
They have transmitted to us precisely those ideas of
death and hell, vicarious suffering and remorseless,
divine decrees, which the Heraclean apotheosis in
Greece at one period and Christ-worship at another,
overthrew for a time; and they have compelled us
�IO
to do the whole protestant work over again, and re
cover Christ by a rebellion against Christianity.
To-day, again, we see rising a certain shame of
theologic dogmas. Though the Church declares the
Bible to be the word of God, it excludes much of it
from its Lectionary, as unfit to be read in public. The
preachers are so ashamed of their dogmas that they
are angry at hearing them quoted, and say they are
caricatures even when taken literally from their creeds
and confessions. Lately the honour has been conferred
upon us of having our heresies made the subject of spe
cial treatment by the Christian Evidence Society, over
which the Archbishop of Canterbury presides, assisted
by many other prelates. Some recent controversies
which we have had in Holloway led that Society
to delegate four eminent clergymen to demolish our
principles during the Sundays of Advent. Now, those
sermons have been published; 1 have read them care
fully ; and in not one of them is there any defence of
Christianity at all. Not one of them deals with the
fall of man, human depravity, the atonement, or hell
fire. Not one of them has touched on anything
distinctive in Christianity. They eulogise Christ’s
character, applaud his charity, praise the sermon on
the mount, and discourse of everything but the real
points at issue. No Hindoo, reading those Advent
sermons, could gather from any word in them that
English religion believed in the Devil at all, much less
�II
as the natural Father of the human family; or in
eternal hell-fire, or vicarious atonement to an un
relenting God. And yet these men were especially
appointed to defend Christianity !
Why did they not defend it ? Why, they are scholars,
and scholars are ashamed of such dogmas. They are
ashamed of a God who says he will laugh at the
calamity of men and mock when their fear cometh ;
they blush for a dogma which says there was a bargain
struck between the Divine Sovereign and Christ,—so
much sin ransomed with so much blood; they feel the
scandal of such guilty calumnies on men and God as
human depravity and future tortures : they dare not
defend such things. So they surround themselves with
a cloud of verbal incense to Christ and Christianity,
and hope people will understand that at the heart of
the rhetorical cloud there is sound orthodoxy. But I
have never seen so startling a manifestation of the
irresistible rationalism of this age as that four clergy
men—among them a Professor of History, and a
Bampton Lecturer—delegated by a Society of Bishops
and clergy to defend Christianity, should pass over its
every distinctive dogma to praise virtues common to all
religions of the world.
As Balaam in the legend was sent for by Balak to
curse Israel but proceeded to bless them, these
defenders of the faith have left at the end of their
labours an impressive testimony that their so-called
�12
faith is indefensible, and that the most Superstition
can hope for is a golden bridge for its retreat before
the reason and sentiment of our time.
I say the “ sentiment ” of our time, for the orthodox
theology is not only repudiated by disciplined reasoners,
but the whole population have become so ashamed of
it that it cannot be taught in the public schools. The
religion now taught in the National Schools is nearly
the religion of Dr. Channing. It mainly depends now
upon the advance of a higher order of teachers, such
as is sure to appear, that those schools shall diffuse a
rational religion. Such a phenomenon would be im
possible were it not that the people have become
ashamed of the traditional dogmas. It has become
possible for our daily papers to write of “the un
pardonable sin ” as a curious survival of antiquity, as
if it were not in both Bible and Theology. An inquest
was recently held on a poor lady who died of the belief
that she had committed that Scriptural sin, and a leading
*
newspaper recommends the seaside for such diseases.
It also says such persons should be surrounded by
friendship and love. Exactly so. Like Alcestis they
are under the dark, deadly shadow of some heartless,
though happily imaginary, deity or demon—some
phantom of the terrors in nature,—and like Alcestis
they are to be brought from that region of shadows by
such love as dwells in human hearts.
* See Daily News, January 19th, 1877.
�All this means a new religion subtilely penetrating,
widely transfusing, the whole heart and brain of
Society. Mankind are saved by a divine humanity.
This is what our ancestors tried to express, as they
fled from gods of the storm to deities of love, incarnate
in human hearts,-—-born of human mothers that they
may bear a maternal tenderness to meet the needs of
a humanity born of woman. “ Had men been angels,”
says the Koran, “ we had sent them an angel out of
heaven; but we have sent them a man like themselves.”
All the incarnations believed in—Vishnu, Krishna,
Christ—meant the universal love recognised in human
love, as the sun might sign its course on a dial. Omar
Kheyam said, “ Diversity of Worship has divided the
human race into seventy-two nations ; from among all
their doctrines I have selected one—Divine Love.
And now, seven centuries after him, the civilised
world is making the same selection. It is quietly
hiding out of sight, secretly burying, the dismal
dogmas of divine wrath.
But we must take warning by the fact that this pro
cess has been gone through before our time j it has
been gone through again and again, but in every case
has been followed by relapse. Every bright incarna
tion marks a period when the human heart rebelled
against some heavenly tyrant; but invariably has the
new form been coerced into the vesture of the old, and
the fallen thunderbolts pressed back into his hand-
�I4
And this has always been done by one and the same
power—that of self-interested priesthood. No priest
hood can be strong except through fear. Many ages
have proved that. To cultivate religious fear has
always been their life in the past ; and now, when the
community has outgrown infra-natural fears—at least
in civilised centres—-they must invent some new kind
of terror, or else abdicate. The investment in Chris
tianity is too great for such abdication in this country,
and so the priestly interest is busily conjuring up
phantoms of another—a social—kind. It is declared
that all morality depends upon churches and sects.
There is still enough superstition to influence women
■and children, and this, we are told, must be carefully
retained and fostered, or else men will break all restraints
and carry society to rack and ruin. We are warned
that our institutions are all built up together like an
arch, Christianity among them ; and if one stone gives
way all the rest will tumble.
The only dark feature of our age is the spread of
this guilty notion, that falsehood is essential to the
welfare of human society. It is just that hypocrisy
which really endangers society. If ever the loyalty of
the people to law fails, it will be because the law insists
on maintaining proven error, and on turning the means
of education and happiness to the repression of science
under superstition.
That the social edifice needs pious fraud to support
�it is the last superstition surviving among the educated
and it is that we have mainly to combat.
And neither Hercules or Christ ever had a more
monstrous thing to encounter. To identify the interests
of superstition with those of social morality is not
mere atheism, it is antitheism; it is not mere belief
that there is no God; it is going against God : it is
pitting falsehood against truth—upholding darkness
against light—ascribing to ignorance more potency
than right knowledge : it is to declare a universe whose
every corner-stone is a lie !
The only saving faith of to-day is a faith that right
can never do wrong, that truth can never misguide
those who trust in it. The absence of this faith is the
only scepticism of our time worth a moment’s con
cern. The downfall of Jehovah, or the Trinity, is no
more than the vanishing away of Jupiter and Diana
who preceded them. Our posterity will witness the
performance of “ Paradise Lost ” as calmly as we now
do the same plot in the play of Alcestis These things
will pass away. But human society will not pass away;
the habit of mind—whether it be truthful or untruth
ful ; the human character—-whether it be faithful or
faithless ;—these will not pass away. We are to-day
weaving the destinies of the future, and every false
rotten thread we weave in will tell in the woof. We
are weaving not for our own race alone, but for
Humanity. As the priestly frauds of seventeen centuries
�i6
-ago are fettering millions to-day—among them many
of our own friends, and ourselves more than we know
—so will every lie sustained to-day bequeath a chain
to those who come after us. Is Humanity nothing to
us ? Then may we creep through our little conven
tional life, enjoy its petty rewards; but it will still be
true that he who has not known the love of Humanity,
nor felt its inspiration, has missed and lost the great
gospel of his time.
We must learn to read these ever new, though most
ancient, revelations of the life in nature to be unfolded
through man. Long ago has Alcestis been set to the
still sad music of humanity, for those who can listen
deep. All around us there is a Hades, and many
there be that go in thereat. Even while we claim
the triumphs of reason, and mark the skulking retreat
of dogmatic phantoms waylaid by the morn, the shadow
falls again upon us from the miasma of moral infidelity.
Out of it darts the double-tongue, striking at the heart
of all manly character. This is the Inferno of those
who see the truth, and applaud when it confronts the
wrongs of distant ages, but before the errors of
to-day cringe and crawl, and have one tongue for
the conventional, another for the secret audience.
Even honest ritualism is better than this unfaithful
rationalism.
Each manly heart has an Alcestis to deliver. Each
must combat with Death,—whether it be the skeleton
�!7
-•arms of a dead creed holding the mind in deadly
grip of fear; or be it the moral death which has
cheated our brother of his soul, and left him the
social simulacrum of a man.
It does not require of us the might of Hercules,
nor cost the blood of Christ, to make some rescues
at least from the dark abodes of faithlessness and fear;
but it does require still that we shall be filled with
■divine love, that we shall be animated by that alone,
till in our human hearts there flame a passion for saving
men, women and children from the bondage of fear
and the degradation of falsehood.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Alcestis in England : a discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, January 21 1877
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CONWAY, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 17 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Includes a bibliographical reference.
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[South Place Chapel]
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[1877]
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G3334
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Free thought
Mythology
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English
Belief and Doubt
Drama-Greek
Faith and Reason-Christianity
Free Thought
Greek literature
Morris Tracts
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Yggdrasil; or the Teutonic tree of existence
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Blind, Karl
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Inscription in ink: "To Moncure D. Conway - as a token of friendship. K.B." Printed in double columns. Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine with some additions. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Spottiswoode & Co., printers
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1877
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CT69
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Mythology
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Conway Tracts
Norse Mythology
Yggdrasil
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY
OH THE
WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS
BY
LORD BACON.
Price One Shilling
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PUBLISHING
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
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AbJOSt
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCiRt y
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY
OR THE
WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS
BY
LORD bacon.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter, Street, E.O,
1891.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE,
28 STONECUTTER, STREET, E.C.
�Pagan Mythology
OR
THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS.
PREFACE.
The earliest antiquity lies buried in silence and
oblivion, excepting the remains we have of it in sacred
writ. This silence was succeeded by poetical fables,
and these, at length, by the writings we now enjoy ; so
that the concealed and secret learning of the ancients
seems separated from the history and knowledge of the
following ages by a veil, or partition wall of fables,
interposing between the things that are lost and those
that remain.
Many may imagine that I am here entering upon a
work of fancy, or amusement, and design to use a
poetical liberty, in explaining poetical fables. It is
true, fables in general are composed of ductile matter,
that may be drawn into great variety by a witty'talent
or an inventive genius, and be delivered of plausible
meanings which they never contained. But this pro
cedure has already been carried to excess ; and great
numbers, to procure the sanction of antiquity to, their
own notions and inventions, have miserably wrested
and abused the fables of the ancients.
Nor is this only a late or unfrequent practice, but of
ancient date, and common even to this day. Thus
Chrysippus, like an interpreter of dreams, attributed
�4
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
the opinions of the Stoics to the poets of old ; and the
chemists, at present, more childishly apply the poetical
transformations to their experiments of the furnace.
And though I have well weighed and considered all
this, and thoroughly seen into the levity which the
mind indulges for allegories and allusions, yet I cannot
but retain a high value for the ancient mythology.
And, certainly, it were very injudicious to suffer the
fondness and licentiousness of a few to detract from
the honor of allegory and parable in general. This
would be rash, and almost profane ; for, since religion
delights in such shadows and disguises, to abolish them
were, in a manner, to prohibit all intercourse betwixt
things divine and human.
Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is, that
a concealed instruction and allegory was originally
intended in many of the ancient fables. This opinion
may, in some respect, be owing to the veneration I
have for antiquity, but more to observing that some
fables discover a great and evident similitude, relation,
and connection with the thing they signify, as well in
the structure of the fable as in the propriety of the
names whereby the persons or actors are characterised;
insomuch, that no one could positively deny a sense
and meaning to be from the first intended, and pur
posely shadowed out in them. For who can hear that
Fame, after the giants were destroyed, sprung up as
their posthumous sister, and not apply it to the clamor
of parties and the seditious rumors which commonly
fly about for a time upon the quelling of insurrections ?
Or who can read how the giant Typhon cut out and
carried away Jupiter’s sinews—which Mercury after
wards stole and again restored to Jupiter—and not
presently observe that this allegory denotes strong and
powerful rebellions, which cut away from kings their
sinews, both of money and authority ; and that’ the
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
5
way to have them restored is by lenity, affability, and
prudent edicts, which soon reconcile, and as it were
steal upon the affections of the subject ? Or who, upon
hearing that memorable expedition of the gods against
the giants, when the braying of Silenus’s ass greatly
contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not
clearly conceive that this directly points at the mon
strous enterprises of rebellious subjects, which are
frequently frustrated and disappointed by vain fears
and empty rumors ?
Again, the conformity and purport of the names is
frequently manifest and self-evident. Thus Metis,
the wife of Jupiter, plainly signifies counsel ; Typhon,
swelling; Pan, universality ; Nemesis, revenge ; etc.
Nor is it a wonder, if sometimes a piece of history or
other things are introduced, by way of ornament; or
if the times of the action are confounded; or if part
of one fable be tacked to another ; or if the allegory
be new turned ; for all this must necessarily happen,
as the fables were the inventions of men who lived in
different ages and had different views ; some of them
being ancient, others more modern ; some having an
eye to natural philosophy, and others to morality or
civil policy.
It may pass for a farther indication of a concealed
and secret meaning, that some of these fables are so
absurd and idle in their narration as to show and pro
claim an allegory, even afar off. A fable that carries
probability with it may be supposed invented for
pleasure, or in imitation of history ; but those that
could never be conceived or related in this way must
surely have a different use. For example, what a
monstrous fiction is this, that Jupiter should take Metis
to wife, and as soon as he found her pregnant eat her
up, whereby he also conceived, and out of his head
brought forth Pallas armed. Certainly no mortal could,
�6
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
but for the sake of the moral it couches, invent such
an absurd dream as this, so much out of the road of
thought!
But the argument of most weight with me is this,
that many of these fables by no means appear to have
been invented by the persons who relate and divulge
them, whether Homer, Hesiod, or others; for if I
were assured they first flowed from those later times
and authors that transmit them to us, I should never
expect anything singularly great or noble from such
an origin. But whoever attentively considers the
thing will find that these fables are delivered down
and related by those writers, not as matters then first
invented and proposed, but as things received and
embraced in earlier ages. Besides, as they are diferently related by writers nearly of the same ages, it
is easily perceived that the relators drew from the
common stock of ancient tradition, and varied but in
point of embellishment, which is their own. And
this principally raises my esteem of these fables,
which I receive, not as the product of the age, or
invention of the poets, but as sacred relics, gentle
whispers, and the breath of better times, that from the
traditions of more ancient nations came, at length, into
the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks. But if any one
shall, notwithstanding this, contend that allegories are
always adventitious, or imposed upon the ancient
fables, and no way native or genuinely contained in
them, we might here leave him undisturbed in that
gravity of judgment he affects (though we cannot help
accounting it something dull and phlegmatic), and if it
were worth the trouble, proceed to another kind of
argument.
Men have proposed to answer two different and
contrary ends by the use of parable ; for parables serve
as well to instruct or illustrate as to wrap up or envelop,
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
7
so that though, for the present, we drop the concealed
use, and suppose the ancient fables to be vague, un
determinate things, formed for amusement, still the
other use must remain, and can never be given up.
And every man, of any learning, must readily allow
that this method of instructing is grave, sober, or
exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the
sciences, as it opens an easy and familial- passage to
the human understanding, in all new discoveries that
are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinions.
Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and con
clusions of the human reason as are now trite and
common were new and little known, all things
abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons,
and allusions, which were not intended to conceal, but
to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men con
tinued rude and unpractised in matters of subtility
and speculation, or even impatient, and in a manner
uncapable of receiving such things as did not directly
fall under and strike the senses. For as hieroglyphics
were in use before writing, so were parables in use
before arguments. And even to this day, if any man
would let new light in upon the human understanding,
and conquer prejudice, without raising contests,
animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go
in the same path, and have recourse to the like method
of allegory, metaphor, and allusion.
To conclude, the knowledge of the early ages was
either great or happy ; great, if they by design made
this use of trope and figure ; happy, if, whilst they
had other views, they afforded matter and occasion to
such noble contemplations. Let either be the case, our
pains, perhaps, will not be misemployed, whether we
illustrate antiquity or things themselves.
The like indeed has been attempted by others ; but
to speak „ ingenuously, their great and voluminous
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
labors have almost destroyed the energy, the efficacy,
and grace of the thing, whilst, being unskilled in
nature, and their learning no more than that of com
mon-place, they have applied the sense of the parables
to certain general and vulgar matters, without reaching
to their real purport, genuine interpretation, and full
depth. For myself, therefore, I expect to appear new
in these common things, because, leaving untouched
such as are sufficiently plain and open, I shall drive
only at those that are either deep or rich.
I.—CASSANDRA, OR DIVINATION.
EXPLAINED OF TOO FREE AND UNSEASONABLE ADVICE.
The Poets relate that Apollo, falling in love with
Cassandra, was still deluded and put off by her, yet
fed with hopes, till she had got from him the gift of
prophecy ; and having now obtained her end, she flatly
rejected his suit. Apollo, unable to recall his rash
gift, yet enraged to be outwitted by a girl, annexed
this penalty to it, that though she should always
prophesy true, she should never be believed ; whence
her divinations were always slighted, even when she
again and again predicted the ruin of her country.
Explanation.—This fable seems invented to express
the insignificance of unreasonable advice. For they
who are conceited, stubborn, or intractable, and listen
not to the instructions of Apollo, the god of harmony,
so as to learn and observe the modulations and measures
of affairs, the sharps and fiats of discourse, the
difference between judicious and vulgar ears, and the
proper times of speech and silence, let them be ever so
intelligent, and ever so frank of their advice, or their
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
9
counsels ever so good and just, yet all their endeavors,
either of persuasion or force, are of little significance,
and rather hasten the ruin of those they advise. But,
at last, when the calamitous event has made the
sufferers feel the effect of their neglect, they too late
reverence their advisers, as deep, foreseeing, and faith
ful prophets.
Of this we have a remarkable instance in Cato of
Utica, who discovered afar off, and long foretold, the
approaching ruin of his country, both in the first con
spiracy, and as it was prosecuted in the civil war
between Csesar and Pompey yet did no good the while,
but rather hurt the commonwealth, and hurried on its
destruction, which Cicero wisely observed in these
words : “ Cato, indeed, judges excellently, but pre
judices the state; for he speaks as in the common
wealth of Plato, and not as in the dregs of Romulus.”
II.—TYPHON: OR A REBEL.
EXPLAINED OF REBELLION.
The fable runs, that Juno, enraged at Jupiter’s
bringing forth Pallas without her assistance, incessantly
solicited all the gods and goddesses, that she might
produce without Jupiter : and having by violence and
importunity obtained the grant, she struck the earth,
and thence immediately sprung up Typhon, a huge
and dreadful monster, whom she committed to the
nursing of a serpent. As soon as he was grown up,
this monster waged war on Jupiter, and taking him
prisoner in the battle, carried him away on his
shoulders, into a remote and obscure quarter: and
there cutting out the sinews of his hands and feet, he
�10
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
bore them off, leaving Jupiter behind miserably
maimed and mangled.
But Mercury afterwards stole these sinews from
Typhon and restored them to Jupiter. Hence, recover
ing his strength, Jupiter again pursues the monster;
first wounds him with a stroke of his thunder, when
serpents arose from the blood of the wound : and now
the monster being dismayed, and taking to flight,.
Jupiter next darted Mount JEtna upon him, and
crushed him with the weight.
Explanation.—This fable seems designed to express
the various fates of kings, and the turns that rebellions
sometimes take, in kingdoms. For princes may be
justly esteemed married to their states, as Jupiter to
Juno ; but it sometimes happens, that, being depraved
by long wielding of the sceptre, and growing tyrannical,
they would engross all to themselves ; and slighting
the counsel of their senators and nobles, conceive by
themselves ; that is, govern according to their own
arbitrary will and pleasure. This inflames the people,
and makes them endeavor to create and set up some
head of their own. Such designs are generally set on
foot by the secret motion and instigation of the peers
and nobles, under whose connivance the common sort
are prepared for rising : whence proceeds a swell in
the state, which is appositely denoted by the nursing
of Typhon. This growing posture of affairs is fed by
the natural depravity, and malignant dispositions of
the vulgar, which to kings is an envenomed serpent.
And now the disaffected, uniting their force, at length
break out into open rebellion, which, producing infinite
mischiefs, both to prince and people, is represented by
the horrid and multiplied deformity of Typhon, with
his hundred heads, denoting the divided powers ; his
flaming mouths, denoting fire and devastation; his
girdles of snakes, denoting sieges and destruction ; his
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
11
iron hands, slaughter and cruelty ; his eagle’s talons,
rapine and plunder ; his plumed body, perpetual
rumors, contradictory accounts, etc. And sometimes
these rebellions grow so high, that kings are obliged,
as if carried on the backs of the rebels, to quit the
throne, and retire to some remote and obscure part of
their dominions, with the loss of their sinews, both of
money and majesty,
But if now they prudently bear this reverse of
fortune, they may, in a short time, by the assistance of
Mercury, recover their sinews again; that is, by becom
ing moderate and affable ; reconciling the minds and
affections of the people to them, by gracious speeches
and prudent proclamations, which will win over the
subject cheerfully to afford new aids and supplies, and
add fresh vigor to authority. But prudent and wary
princes here seldom incline to try fortune by a war,
yet do their utmost, by some grand exploit, to crush
the reputation of the rebels: and if the attempt
succeeds, the rebels, conscious of the wound received,
and distrustful of their cause, first betake themselves
to broken and empty threats, like the hissings of
serpents ; and next, when matters are grown desperate,
to flight. And now, when they thus begin to shrink,
it is safe and seasonable for kings to pursue them with
their forces, and the whole strength of the kingdom ;
thus effectually quashing and suppressing them, as it
were by the weight of a mountain.
III.—THE CYCLOPS : OR THE MINISTERS OF
TERROR.
EXPLAINED OF BASE COURT OFFICERS.
It is related that the Cyclops, for their savageness
and cruelty, were by Jupiter first thrown into Tartarus,
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
and there condemned to perpetual imprisonment ; but,
that afterwards, Tellus, persuaded Jupiter it would be
for his service to release them, and employ them in
forging thunderbolts. This he accordingly did ; and
they, with unwearied pains and diligence, hammered
out his bolts, and other instruments of terror, with a
frightful and continual din of the anvil.
It happened long after, that Jupiter was displeased
with .ZEsculapius, the son of Apollo, for having, by the
art of medicine, restored a dead man to life ; but con
cealing his indignation, because the action in itself
was pious and illustrious, he secretly incensed the
Cyclops against him, who, without remorse, presently
slew him with their thunderbolts ; in revenge whereof,
Apollo, with Jupiter’s connivance, shot them all dead
with his arrows.
Explanation.—This fable seems to point at the
behavior of princes, who, having cruel, bloody,
and oppressive ministers, first punish and displace
them; but afterwards, by the advice of Tellus, that is,
some earthly-minded and ignoble person, employ them
again, to serve a turn, when there is occasion for
cruelty in execution, or severity in exaction : but these
ministers being base in their nature, whet by their
former disgrace, and well aware of what is expected
from them, use double diligence in their office ; till,
proceeding unwarily, and over-eager to gain favor, they
sometimes, from the private nods and ambiguous orders
of their prince, perform some odious or execrable
action : When princes, to decline the envy themselves,
and knowing they shall never want such tools at their
back, drop them, and give them up to the friends and
followers of the injured person; thus exposing them,
as sacrifices to revenge and populai’ odium : whence
with great applause, acclamations, and good wishes to
the prince, these miscreants at last meet with their desert.
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13
IV.—NARCISSUS : OR SELF-LOVE.
Narcissus is said to have been extremely beautiful
and comely, but intolerably proud and disdainful ; so
that, pleased with himself, and scorning the world, he
led a solitary life in the woods ; hunting only with a
few followers, who were his professed admirers,
amongst whom the nymph Echo was his constant
attendant. In this method of life it was once his fate
to approach a clear fountain, where he laid himself
down to rest, in the noonday heat ; when, beholding
his image in the water, he fell into such a rapture and
admiration of himself, that he could by no means be got
away, but remained continually fixed and gazing, till
at length he was turned into a flower, of his own name,
which appears early in the spring, and is consecrated
to the infernal deities, Pluto, Proserpine, and the Furies.
Explanation. —This fable seems to paint the behavior
and fortune of those who, for their beauty, or other
endowments, wherewith nature (without any industry
of their own) has graced and adorned them, are extra
vagantly fond of themselves : for men of such a
disposition generally affect retirement, and absence
from public affairs ; as a life of business must neces
sarily subject them to many neglects and contempts,
which might disturb and ruffle their minds : whence
such persons commonly lead a solitary, private, and
shadowy life ; see little company, and those only such
as highly admire and reverence them ; or, like an echo,
assent to all they say.
And they who are depraved, and rendered still fonder
of themselves by this custom, grow strangely indolent,
unactive, and perfectly stupid. The Narcissus, a spring
flower, is an elegant emblem of this temper, which" at
first flourishes, and is talked of, but when ripe, frus
trates the expectation conceived of it.
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
And that this flower should be sacred to the infernal
powers, carries out the allusion still farther ; because
men of this humor are perfectly useless in all respects ;
for whatever yields no fruit, but passes, and is no more,
like the way of a ship in the sea, was by the ancients
consecrated to the infernal shades and powers.
V.—THE RIVER STYX: OR LEAGUES.
EXPLAINED OE NECESSITY, IN THE OATHS OR SOLEMN
LEAGUES OF PRINCES.
The only solemn oath, by which the gods irrevocably
obliged themselves, is a well-known thing, and makes
a part of many ancient fables. To this oath they did
not invoke any celestial divinity, or divine attribute,
but only called to witness the river Styx; which, with
many meanders, surrounds the infernal court of Dis.
For this form alone, and none but this, was held
inviolable and obligatory: and the punishment of
falsifying it, was that dreaded one of being excluded,
for a certain number of years, the table of the gods.
Explanation.—This fable seems invented to show
the nature of the compacts and confederacies of princes ;
which, though ever so solemnly and religiously sworn
to, prove but little the more binding for it : so that
oaths in this case seem used, rather for decorum, repu
tation, and ceremony, than for fidelity, security, and
effectuating. And though these oaths were strengthened
with the bonds of affinity, which are the links and ties
of nature, and again, by mutual services and good
offices, yet we see all this will generally give way to
ambition, convenience, and the thirst of power ; the
rather, because it is easy for princes, under various
specious pretences, to defend, disguise, and conceal
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
15
their ambitious desires and insincerity ; having no
judge to call them to account. There is, however, one
true and proper confirmation of their faith, though no
celestial divinity; but that great divinity of princes,
Necessity ; or, the danger of the state ; and the securing
of advantage.
This necessity is elegantly represented by Styx, the
fatal river, that can never be crossed back. And this
deity it was, which Iphicrates the Athenian invoked
in making a league: and because he roundly and
openly avows what most others studiously conceal, it
may be proper to give his own words. Observing that
the Lacedsemonians were inventing and proposing a
variety of securities, sanctions, and bonds of alliance,
he interrupted them thus : “ There may, indeed, my
friends, be one bond and means of security between
us ; and that is, for you to demonstrate you have
delivered into our hands such things as that if you
had the greatest desire to hurt us you could not be
able.” Therefore, if the power of offending be taken
away, or if by a breach of compact there be danger of
destruction or diminution to the state or tribute, then
it is that covenants will be ratified, and confirmed, as
it were, by the Stygian oath, whilst there remains an
impending danger of being prohibited and excluded
the banquet of the gods ; by which expression the
ancients denoted the rights and prerogatives, the
the affluence and the felicities, of empire and dominion.
VI.—PAN : OR NATURE.
EXPLAINED OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY,
The ancients have, with great exactness, delineated
universal nature under the person of Pan. They leave
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
his origin doubtful ; some asserting him the son of
Mercury, and others the common offspring of all
Penelope’s suitors. The latter supposition doubtless
occasioned some later rivals to entitle this ancient
fable Penelope ; a thing frequently practised when the
earlier relations are applied to more modern characters
and persons, though sometimes with great absurdity
and ignorance, as in the present case ; for Pan was one
of the ancientest gods, and long before the time of
Ulysses; besides, Penelope was venerated by antiquity
for her matronal chastity. A third sort will have him
the issue of Jupiter and Hybris, that is, Reproach.
But whatever his origin was, the Destinies are allowed
his sisters.
He is described by antiquity, with pyramidal horns
reaching up to heaven, a rough and shaggy body, a
very long beard, of a biform figure, human above, half
brute below, ending in goat’s feet. His arms, or
ensigns of power, are, a pipe in his left hand, composed
of seven reeds; in his right a crook; and he wore for
his mantle a leopard’s skin.
His attributes and titles were the god of hunters,
shepherds, and all the rural inhabitants ; president of
the mountains ; and, after Mercury, the next messenger
of the gods. He was also held the leader and ruler of
the Nymphs, who continually danced and frisked about
him, attended with the Satyrs and their elders, the
Sileni. He had also the power of striking terrors,
especially such as were vain and superstitious ; whence
they came to be called panic terrors.
Few actions are recorded of him, only a principal
one is, that he challenged Cupid at wrestling, and was
worsted. He also catched the giant Typhon in a net,
and held him fast. They relate farther of him, that
when Ceres, growing disconsolate for the rape of Prosperine, hid herself, and all the gods took the utmost
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
17
pains to find her, by going out different ways for that
purpose, Pan only had the good fortune to meet her,
as he was hunting, and discovered her to the rest. He
likewise had the assurance to rival Apollo in music ;
and in the judgment of Midas was preferred ; but the
judge had, though with great privacy and secrecy, a
pair of ass’s ears fastened on him for his sentence.
There is very little said of his amours ; which may
• seem strange among such a multitude of gods, so pro
fusely amorous. He is only reported to have been
very fond of Echo, who was also esteemed his wife ;
and one nymph more, called Syrinx, with the love of
whom Cupid inflamed him for his insolent challenge ;
so he is reported once to have solicited the moon to
accompany him apart into the deep woods.
Lastly, Pan had no descendant, which also is a
wonder, when the male gods were so extremely pro
lific ; only he was the reputed father of a servant-girl
called Iambe, who used to divert strangers with her
ridiculous prattling stories.
This fable is perhaps the noblest of all antiquity, and
pregnant with the mysteries and secrets of nature.
Pan, as the name imports, represents the universe,
about whose origin there are two opinions, viz., that it
either sprung from Mercury, that is, the divine word,
according to the Scriptures and philosophical divines,
or from the confused seeds of things. For they who
allow only one beginning of all things, either ascribe
it to God; or, if they suppose a material beginning,
acknowledge it to be various in its powers ; so that the
whole dispute comes to these points ; namely, either
that nature proceeds from Mercury, or from Penelope
and all her suitors.
The third origin of Pan seems borrowed by the
Greeks from the Hebrew mysteries, either by means of
the Egyptians, or otherwise ; for it relates to the state
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
of the world, not in its first creation, but as made
subject to death and corruption after the fall; and in
this state it was, and remains, the offspring of God and
Sin, or Jupiter and Reproach. And therefore these
three several accounts of Pan’s birth may seem true,
if duly distinguished in respect of things and times.
For this Pan, or the universal nature of things, which
we view and contemplate, had its origin from the
divine Word and confused matter, first created by God
himself, with the subsequent introduction of sin, and
consequently corruption.
The Destinies, or the natures and fates of things, are
justly made Pan’s sisters, as the chain of natural causes
links together the rise, duration, and corruption ; the
exaltation, degeneration, and workings ; the processes,
the effects, and changes, of all that can any way happen
to things.
Horns are given him, broad at the roots, but narrow
and sharp at the top, because the nature of all things
seems pyramidal; for individuals are infinite, but
being collected into a variety of species, they rise up
into kinds, and these again ascend, and are contracted
into generals, till at length nature may seem collected
to a point. And no wonder if Pan’s horns reach to the
heavens, since the sublimities of nature, or abstract
ideas, reach in a manner to things divine ; for there is
a short and ready passage from metaphysics to natural
theology.
Pan’s body, or the body of nature, is, with great pro
priety and elegance, painted shaggy and hairy, as repre
senting the rays of things ; for rays are as the hair, or
fleece of nature, and more or less worn by all bodies.
This evidently appears in vision, and in all effects or
operations at a distance; for whatever operates thus
may be properly said to emit rays. But particularly
the beard of Pan is exceedingly long, because the rays
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
19
of the celestial bodies penetrate, and act to a prodigious
distance, and have descended into the interior of the
earth so far as to change its surface ; and the sun him
self, when clouded on its upper part, appears to the eye
bearded.
Again, the body of nature is justly described biform,
because of the difference between its superior and
inferior parts, as the former, for their beauty, regularity
of motion, and influence over the earth, may be pro
perly represented by the human figure, and the latter,
because of their disorder, irregularity, and subjection
to the celestial bodies, are by the brutal. This biform
figure also represents the participation of one species
with another ; for there appear to be no simple natures ;
but all participate or consist of two: thus man has
somewhat of the brute, the brute somewhat of the
plant, the plant somewhat of the mineral; so that all
natural bodies have really two faces, or consist of a
superior and an inferior species.
There lies a curious allegory in the making of Pan
goatfooted, on account of the motion of ascent which
the terrestrial bodies have towards the air and heavens ;
for the goat is a clambering creature, that delights in
climbing up rocks and precipices ; and in the same
manner the. matters destined to this lower globe
strongly affect to rise upwards, as appears from the
clouds and meteors.
Pan’s arms, or the ensigns he bears in his hands, are
of two kinds—the one an emblem of harmony, the
other of empire. His pipe, composed of seven reeds,
plainly denotes the consent and harmony, or the con
cords and discords of things, produced by the motion
of the seven planets. His crook also contains a fine
representation of the ways of nature, which are partly
straight and partly crooked ; thus the staff, having an
extraordinary bend towards the top, denotes that the
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
works of Divine Providence are generally brought
about by remote means, or in a circuit, as if somewhat
else were intended rather than the effect produced, as
in the sending of Joseph into Egypt, etc. So likewise
in human government, they who sit at the helm
manage and wind the people more successfully by
pretext and oblique courses, than they could by such
as are direct and straight; so that, in effect, all sceptres
are crooked at the top.
Pan’s mantle, or clothing, is with great ingenuity
made of a leopard’s skin, because of the spots it has ;
for in like manner the heavens are sprinkled with
stars, the sea with islands, the earth with flowers, and
almost each particular thing is variegated, or wears a
mottled coat.
The office of Pan could not be more livelily expressed
than by making him the god of hunters ; for every
natural action, every motion and process, is no other
than a chase: thus arts and sciences hunt out their
works, and human schemes and counsels their several
ends ; and all living creatures either hunt out their
aliment, pursue their prey, or seek their pleasures, and
this in a skilful and sagacious manner. He is also
styled the god of the rural inhabitants, because men in
this situation live more according to nature than they
do in cities and courts, where nature is so corrupted
with effeminate arts, that the saying of the poet may
be verified—
----- pars minima est ipsa puella sui.
He is likewise particularly styled President of the
Mountains, because in mountains and lofty places the
nature of things lies more open and exposed to the eye
and the understanding.
In his being called the messenger of the gods, next
after Mercury, lies a divine allegory, as next after the
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
21
Word of God, the image of the world is the herald of
the Divine power and wisdom, according to the
expression of the Psalmist, “ The heavens declare the
glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handi
work.”
Pan is delighted with the company of the Nymphs ;
that is, the souls of all living creatures are the delight
of the world ; and he is properly called their governor,
because each of them follows its own nature as a leader,
and all dance about their own respective rings, with
infinite variety and never-ceasing motion. And with
these continually j oin the Satyrs and Sileni; that is, youth
and age : for all things have a kind of young, cheerful?
and dancing time ; and again their time of slowness,
tottering, and creeping. And whoever, in a true light,
considers the motions and endeavors of both these
ages, like another Democritus, will perhaps find them
as odd and strange as the gesticulations and antic
motions of the Satyrs and Sileni.
The power he had of striking terrors contains a very
sensible doctrine ; for nature has implanted fear in all
living creatures ; as well to keep them from risking
their lives, as to guard against injuries and violence ;
and yet this nature or passion keeps not its bounds, but
with just and profitable fears always mixes such as are
vain and senseless ; so that all things, if we could see
their insides, would appear full of panic terrors. Thus
mankind, particularly the vulgar, labor under a high
degree of superstition, which is nothing more than a
panic-dread that principally reigns in unsettled and
troublesome times.
The presumption of Pan in challenging Cupid to the
conflict, denotes that matter has an appetite and ten
dency to a dissolution of the world, and falling back
to its first chaos again, unless this depravity and
inclination were restrained and subdued by a more
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
powerful concord and agreement of things, properly
expressed by Love or Cupid ; it is therefore well for
mankind, and the state of all things, that Pan was
thrown and conquered in the struggle.
His catching and detaining Typhon in the net
receives a similar explanation ; for whatever vast and
unusual swells, which the word typhon signifies, may
sometimes be raised in nature, as in the sea, the clouds,
the earth, or the like, yet nature catches, entangles,
and holds all such outrages and insurrections in her
inextricable net, wove as it were of adamant.
That part of the fable w'hich attributes the discovery
of lost Ceres to Pan whilst he was hunting—a happi
ness denied the other gods, though they diligently and
expressly sought her—contains an exceeding just and
prudent admonition ; namely, that we are not to expect
the discovery of things useful in common life, as that of
corn, denoted by Ceres, from abstract philosophies, as
if these were the gods of the first order,—no, not
though we used our utmost endeavors this way,—but
only from Pan, that is a sagacious experience and
general knowledge- of nature, which is often found,
even by accident, to stumble upon such discoveries
whilst the pursuit was directed another way.
The event of his contending with Apollo in music
affords us a useful instruction, that may help to humble
the human reason and judgment, which is too apt to
boast and glory in itself. There seem to be two kinds
of harmony—the one of Divine Providence, the othei’
of human reason ; but the government of the world,
the administration of its affairs, and the more secret
Divine judgments, sound harsh and dissonant to human
ears or human judgment; and though this ignorance
be justly rewarded with asses ears, yet they are put on
and worn, not openly, but with great secrecy; nor is the
deformity of the thing seen or observed by the vulgar.
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
23
We must not find it strange if no amors are related
of Pan besides his marriage with Echo ; for nature
enjoys itself, and in itself all other things. He that
loves desires enjoyment, but in profusion there is no
room for desire ; and therefore Pan, remaining content
with himself, has no passion unless it be for discourse,
which is well shadowed out by Echo or talk, or when
it is more accurate, by Syrinx or writing. But Echo
makes a most excellent wife for Pan, as being no other
than genuine philosophy, which faithfully repeats his
words, or only transcribes exactly as nature dictates ;
thus representing the true image and reflection of the
world without adding a tittle.
It tends also to the support and perfection of Pan or
nature to be without offspring ; for the world generates
in its parts, and not in the way of a whole, as wanting
a body external to itself wherewith to generate.
Lastly, for the supposed or spurious prattling daughter
of Pan, it is an excellent addition to the fable, and
aptly represents the talkative philosophies that have at
all times been stirring, and filled the word with idle
tales, being ever barren, empty, and servile, though
sometimes indeed diverting and entertaining, and
sometimes again troublesome and importunate.
VII.—PERSEUS : OR WAR.
EXPLAINED OF THE PREPARATION AND CONDUCT
NECESSARY TO WAR.
“ The fable relates, that Perseus was despatched from
the east by Pallas, to cut off Medusa’s head, who had
committed great ravage upon the people of the west ;
for this Medusa was so dire a monster as to turn into
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
stone all those who but looked upon her. She was a
Gorgon, and the only mortal one of the three, the other
two being invulnerable. Perseus, therefore, preparing
himself for this grand enterprise, had presents made
him from three of the g.ods : Mercury gave him wings
for his heels ; Pluto, a helmet ; and Pallas, a shield
and a mirror. But though he was now so well
equipped, he posted not directly to Medusa, but first
turned aside to the Grese, who were half-sisters to the
Gorgons. These Greae were gray-headed, and like old
women from their birth, having among them all three
but one eye, and one tooth, which as they had occasion
to go out, they each wore by turns, and laid them down
again upon coming back. This eye and this tooth they
lent to Perseus, who now judging himself sufficiently
furnished, he, without further stop, flies swiftly away
to Medusa, and finds her asleep. But not venturing his
eyes, for fear she should wake, he turned his head
aside, and viewed her in Pallas’s mirror; and thus
directing his stroke, cut off her head; when im
mediately, from the gushing blood, there darted
Pegasus, winged. Perseus now inserted Medusa’s head
into Pallas’s shield, which thence retained the faculty
of astonishing and benumbing all who looked on it.”
This fable seems invented to show the prudent
method of choosing, undertaking, and conducting a
war ; and, accordingly, lays down three useful precepts
about it, as if they were the precepts of Pallas.
(1) The first is, that no prince should be oversolicitous to subdue a neighboring nation ; for the
method of enlarging the empire is very different from
that of increasing an estate. Regard is justly had to
contiguity, or adjacency, in private lands and posses
sions ; but in the extending of empire, the occasion,
the facility, and advantage of a war, are to be regarded
instead of vicinity. It is certain that the Romans, at
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
25
the time they stretched but little beyond Liguria to the
west, had by their arms subdued the provinces as far
as Mount Taurus to the east. And thus Perseus readily
undertook a very long expedition, even from the east
to the extremities of the west.
The second precept is, that the cause of the war be
just and honorable ; for this adds alacrity both to the
soldiers, and the people who find the supplies : pro
cures aids, alliances, and numerous other conveniences.
Now there is no cause of war more just and laudable
than the suppressing of tyranny, by which a people
are dispirited, benumbed, or left without life and
vigor, as at the sight of Medusa.
Lastly, it is prudently added, that as there were
three of the Gorgons, who represent war, Perseus
singled her out for his expedition that was mortal ;
which affords this precept, that such kind of wars
should be chose as may be brought to a conclusion,
without pursuing vast and infinite hopes.
Again, Perseus’s setting-out is extremely well adapted
to his undertaking, and in a manner commands success ;
he received despatch from Mercury, secrecy from
Pluto, and foresight from Pallas. It also contains an
excellent allegory, that the wings given him by
Mercury were for his heels, not for his shoulders;
because expedition is not so much required in the first
preparations for war, as in the subsequent matters, that
administer to the first; for there is no error more
frequent in war, than, after brisk preparations, to halt
for subsidiary forces and effective supplies.
The allegory of Pluto’s helmet, rendering men
invisible and secret, is sufficiently evident of itself ;
but the mystery of the shield and the mirror lies
deeper, and denotes, that not only a prudent caution
must be had to defend, like the shield, but also such
an address and penetration as may discover the strength,
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
the motions, the counsels, and designs of the enemy ;
like the mirror of Pallas.
But though Perseus may now seem extremely well
prepared, there still remains the most important thing
of all ; before he enters upon the war, he must of
necessity consult the Grese. These Grese are treasons ;
half, but degenerate sisters of the Gorgons ; who are
representatives of wars : for wars are generous and
noble ; but treasons base and vile. The Grese are
elegantly described as hoary-headed, and like old
women from their birth ; on account of the perpetual
cares, fears, and trepidations attending traitors. Their
force, also, before it breaks out into open revolt, con
sists either in an eye or a tooth ; for all faction
alienated from a state, is both watchful and biting ;
and this eye and tooth are, as it were, common to all
the disaffected ; because whatever they learn and know
is transmitted from one to another, as by the hands of
faction. And for the tooth, they all bite with the
same ; and clamor with one throat; so that each of
them singly expresses the multitude.
These Grese, therefore, must be prevailed upon by
Perseus to lend him their eye and their tooth; the eye
to give him indications, and make discoveries; the
tooth for sowing rumors, raising envy, and stirring up
the minds of the people. And when all these things
are thus disposed and prepared, then follows the action
of the war.
He finds Medusa asleep; for whoever undertakes a
war with prudence, generally falls upon the enemy un
prepared, and nearly in a state of security; and here
is the occasion for Pallas’s mirror : for it is common
enough, before the danger presents itself, to see exactly
into the state and posture of the enemy; but the
principal use of the glass is, in the very instant of
danger, to discover the manner thereof, and prevent
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
27
consternation ; which, is the thing intended by Per
seus’s turning his head aside, and viewing the enemy
in the glass.
Two effects here follow the conquest : 1. The darting
forth of Pegasus; which evidently denotes fame, that
flies abroad, proclaiming the victory far and near.
2. The bearing of Medusa’s head in the shield, which
is the greatest possible defence and safeguard ; for one
grand and memorable enterprise, happily accomplished,
bridles all the motions and attempts of the enemy,
stupifi.es disaffections, and quells commotions.
VIII.—ENDYMION: OR A FAVORITE.
EXPLAINED OE COURT FAVORITES.
The goddess Luna is said to have fallen in love with
the shepherd Endymion, and to have carried on her
amours with him in a new and singular manner; it
being her custom, whilst he lay reposing in his native
cave, under Mount Latmus, to descend frequently from
her sphere, enjoy his company whilst he slept, and
then go up to heaven again. And all this while
Endymion’s fortune was no way prejudiced by his
unactive and sleepy life, the goddess causing his flocks
to thrive, and grow so exceeding numerous, that none
of the other shepherds could compare with him.
Explanation.—This fable seems to describe the
tempers and dispositions of princes, who, being
thoughtful and suspicious, do not easily admit to their
privacies such men as are prying, curious, and vigilant,
or, as it were, sleepless; but rather such as are of an
easy, obliging nature, and indulge them in their
pleasures, without seeking anything farther; but
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
seeming ignorant, insensible, or, as it were, lulled
asleep before them. Princes usually treat such persons
familiarly ; and, quitting their throne dike Luna, think
they may with safety unbosom to them. This temper
was very remarkable in Tiberius, a prince exceeding
difficult to please, and who had no favorites but those
that perfectly understood his way, and, at the same
time, obstinately dissembled their knowledge, almost
to a degree of stupidity.
The cave is not improperly mentioned in the fable ;
it being a common thing for the favorites of a prince
to have their pleasant retreats, whither to invite him,
by way of relaxation, though without prejudice to
their own fortunes ; these favorites usually making a
good provision for themselves.
I or though their prince should not, perhaps, promote
them to dignities, yet, out of real affection, and not
only for convenience, they generally feel the enriching
influence of his bounty.
IX.—THE SISTERS OF THE GIANTS: OR FAME.
EXPLAINED OF PUBLIC DETRACTION.
The poets relate, that the giants, produced from the
earth, made war upon Jupiter, and the other gods, but
were repulsed and conquered by thunder ; whereat the
earth, provoked, brought forth Fame, the youngest
sister of the giants, in revenge for the death of her
sons.
Explanation.—The meaning of the fable seems to
be this : the earth denotes the nature of the vulgar
who are always swelling, and rising against their rulers,
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,
29
and endeavoring at changes. This disposition, getting
a fit opportunity, breeds rebels and traitors, who, with
impetuous rage, threaten and contrive the overthrow
and destruction of princes.
And when brought under and subdued, the same
vile and restless nature of the people, impatient of
peace, produces rumors, detractions, slanders, libels,
etc., to blacken those in authority ; so that rebellious
actions and seditious rumors, differ not in origin and
stock, but only as it were in sex ; treasons and rebel
lions being the brothers, and scandal or detraction the
sister.
X.—ACTEON AND PENTHEUS: OR A
CURIOUS MAN.
EXPLAINED OF CURIOSITY, OR PRYING INTO THE SECRETS
OF PRINCES AND DIVINE MYSTERIES.
The ancients afford us two examples for suppressing
the impertinent curiosity of mankind, in diving into
secrets, and imprudently longing and endeavoring to
discover them. The one of these is in the person of
Acteon, and the other in that of Pentheus. Acteon,
undesignedly chancing to see Diana naked, was turned
into a stag, and torn to pieces by his own hounds.
And Pentheus, desiring to pry into the hidden
mysteries of Bacchus’s sacrifice, and climbing a tree
for that purpose, was struck with a phrensy. This
phrensy of Pentheus caused him to see things double
particularly the sun, and his own city Thebes, so that
running homewards, and immediately espying another
Thebes, he runs towards that; and thus continues
incessantly tending first to the one, and then to the
other, without coming at either.
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
Explanation. —The first of these fables may relate
to the secrets of princes, and the second to divine
mysteries. For they who are not intimate with a
prince, yet against his will have a knowledge of his
secrets, inevitably incur his displeasure ; and therefore,
being aware that they are singled out, and all oppor
tunities watched against them, they lead the life of a
stag, full of fears and suspicions. It likewise fre
quently happens that their servants and domestics
accuse them, and plot their overthrow, in order to
procure favor with the prince ; for whenever the king
manifests his displeasure, the person it falls upon must
expect his servants to betray him, and worry him
down, as Acteon was worried by his own dogs.
The punishment of Pentheus is of another kind ;
for they who, unmindful of their mortal state, rashly
aspire to divine mysteries, by climbing the heights of
nature and philosophy, here represented by climbing a
tree,—their fate is perpetual inconstancy, perplexity,
and instability of judgment. For as there is one light
of nature, and another light that is divine, they see, as
it were, two suns. And as the actions of life, and the
determinations of the will, depend upon the under
standing, they are distracted as much in opinion as in
will; and therefore judge very inconsistently, or con
tradictorily ; and see, as it were, Thebes double ; for
Thebes, being the refuge and habitation of Pentheus,
here denotes the ends of actions : whence they know
not what course to take, but remaining undetermined
and unresolved in their views and designs, they are
merely driven about by every sudden gust and impulse
of the mind.
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
31
XI.—ORPHEUS : OR PHILOSOPHY.
EXPLAINED OF NATURAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY,
Introduction.—The fable of Orpheus, though trite
and common, has never been well interpreted, and
seems to hold out a picture of universal philosophy ;
for to this sense may be easily transferred what is said
of his being a wonderful and perfectly divine person,
skilled in all kinds of harmony, subduing and drawing
all things after him by sweet and gentle methods and
modulations. For the labors of Orpheus exceed the
labors of Hercules, both in power and dignity, as the
works of knowledge exceed the works of strength.
Fable.—Orpheus having his beloved wife snatched
from him by sudden death, resolved upon descending
to the infernal regions, to try if, by the power of his
harp, he could re-obtain her. And, in effect, he so
appeased and soothed the infernal powers by the
melody and sweetness of his harp and voice, that they
indulged him the liberty of taking her back, on con
dition that she should follow him behind, and he not
turn to look upon her till they came into open day ;
but he, through the impatience of his care and affection,
and thinking himself almost past danger, at length
looked behind him, whereby the condition was
violated, and she again precipitated to Pluto’s regions.
From this time Orpheus grew pensive and sad, a hater
of the sex, and went into solitude, where, by the
same sweetness of his harp and voice, he first drew the
wild beasts of all sorts about him ; so that, forgetting
their natures, they were neither actuated by revenge,
cruelty, lust, hunger, or the desire of prey, but stood
gazing about him, in a tame and gentle manner, listen
ing attentively to his music. Nay, so great was the
power and efficacy of his harmony, that it even caused
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
the trees and stones to remove, and place themselves
in a regular manner about him. When he had for a
time, and with great admiration, continued to do this,
at length the Thracian women, raised by the instigation
of Bacchus, first blew a deep and hoarse-sounding
horn, in such an outrageous manner, that it quite
drowned the music of Orpheus. And thus the power
which, as the link of their society, held all things in
order, being dissolved, disturbance reigned anew;
each creature returned to its own nature, and pursued
and preyed upon its fellow, as before. The rocks and
woods also started back to their former places ; and
•even Orpheus himself was at last torn to pieces by
these female furies, and his limbs scattered all over
the desert. But, in sorrow and revenge for his death,
the river Helicon, sacred to the Muses, hid its waters
under ground, and rose again in other places.
Explanation.—The fable receives this explanation.
The music of Orpheus is of two kinds; one that
appeases the infernal powers, and the other that draws
together the wild beasts and trees. The former pro
perly relates to natural, and the latter to moral
philosophy, or civil society. The reinstatement and
restoration of corruptible things is the noblest work of
natural philosophy ; and, in a less degree, the preser
vation of bodies in their own state, or a prevention of
their dissolution and corruption. And if this be
possible, it can certainly be effected no other way than
by proper and exquisite attemperations of nature ; as
it were by the harmony and fine touching of the harp.
But as this is a thing of exceeding great difficulty, the
end is seldom obtained ; and that, probably, for no
reason more than a curious and unseasonable im
patience and solicitude.
And, therefore, philosophy, being almost unequal to
the task, has cause to grow sad, and hence betakes
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33
itself to human affairs, insinuating into men’s minds
the love of virtue, equity, and peace, by means of
eloquence and persuasion ; thus forming men into
societies ; bringing them under laws and regulations ;
and making them forget their unbridled passions and
affections, so long as they hearken to precepts and
submit to discipline. And thus they soon after build
themselves habitations, form cities, cultivate lands,
plant orchards, gardens, etc. So that they may not
improperly be said to remove and call the trees and
stones together.
. And this regard to civil affairs is justly and regularly
placed after diligent trial made for restoring the mortal
body; the attempt being frustrated in the end—
because the unavoidable necessity of death, thus evi
dently laid before mankind, animates them to seek a
kind of eternity by works of perpetuity, character,
and fame.
It is also prudently added, that Orpheus was after
wards averse to women and wedlock, because the
indulgence of a married state, and the natural affec
tions which men have for their children, often prevent
them from entering upon any grand, noble, or meri
torious enterprise for the public good ; as thinking it
sufficient to obtain immortality by their descendants,
without endeavoring a.t great actions.
And even the works of knowledge, though the most,
excellent among human things, have their periods ;
for after kingdoms and commonwealths have flourished
for a time, disturbances, seditions, and wars, often
arise, in the din whereof, first the laws are silent and
not heard ; and then men return to their own depraved
natures—whence cultivated lands and cities soon
become desolate and waste. And if this disorder con
tinues, learning and philosophy is infallibly torn to
pieces ; so that only some scattered fragments thereof
c
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
can afterwards be found up and down, in a few places,
like planks after a shipwreck. And barbarous times
succeeding, the river Helicon dips under-ground ; that
is, letters are buried, till things having undergone
their due course of changes, learning rises again, and
shows its head, though seldom in the same place, but
in some other nation.
XII.—CCELUM : OR BEGINNINGS.
EXPLAINED OF THE CREATION, OR ORIGIN OF ALL THINGS.
The poets relate, that Coelum was the most ancient
of all the gods ; that his parts of generation were cut
off by his son Saturn; that Saturn had a numerous
offspring, but devoured all his sons, as soon as they
were born ; that Jupiter at length escaped the common
fate; and when grown up, drove his father Saturn into
Tartarus ; usurped the kingdom; cut off his father’s
genitals, with the same knife wherewith Saturn had
dismembered Ccelum, and throwing them into the sea,
thence sprung Venus.
Before Jupiter was well established in his empire,
two memorable wars were made upon him : the first
by the Titans, in subduing of whom Sol, the only one
of the Titans who favored Jupiter, performed him
singular service ; the second by the giants, who being
destroyed and subdued by the thunder and arms of
Jupiter, he now reigned secure.
Explanation.—This fable appears to be an enigmati
cal account of the origin of all things, not greatly
differing from the philosophy afterwards embraced by
Democritus, who expressly asserts the eternity of
matter, but denies the eternity of the world ; thereby
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
35
approaching to the truth of sacred writ, which makes
chaos, or uninformed matter, to exist before the six
days’ works.
The meaning of the fable seems to be this : Ccelum
denotes the concave space, or vaulted roof that incloses
all matter, and Saturn the matter itself, which cuts off
all power of generation from his father ; as one and
the same quantity of matter remains invariable in
nature, without addition or diminution. But the
agitations and struggling motions of matter first pro
duced certain imperfect and ill-joined compositions of
things, as it were so many first rudiments, or essays of
worlds ; till, in process of time, there arose a fabric
capable of preserving its form and structure. Whence
the first age was shadowed out by the reign of Saturn ;
who, on account of the frequent dissolutions, and
short durations of things, was said to devour his
children. And the second age was denoted by the
reign of Jupiter ; who thrust, or drove those frequent
and transitory changes into Tartarus—a place expres
sive of disorder. This place seems to be in the middle
space, between the lower heavens and the internal
parts of the earth, wherein disorder, imperfection,
mutation, mortality, destruction, and corruption, are
principally found.
Venus was not born during the former generation of
things, under the reign of Saturn ; for whilst discord
and jar had the upper hand of concord and uniformity
in the matter of the universe, a change of the entire
structure was necessary. And in this manner things
were generated and destroyed, before Saturn was dis
membered. But when this manner of generation
ceased, there immediately followed another, brought
about by Venus, or a perfect and established harmony
of things ; whereby changes were wrought in the
parts, whilst the universal fabric remained entire and
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
undisturbed. Saturn, however, is said to be thrust
out and dethroned, not killed, and become extinct ;
because, agreeably to the opinion of Democritus, the
world might relapse into its old confusion and dis
order, which Lucretius hoped would not happen in his
time.
But now, when the world was compact, and held
together by its own bulk and energy, yet there was no
rest from the beginning ; for first, there followed con
siderable motions and disturbances in the celestial
regions, though so regulated and moderated by the
power of the Sun, prevailing over the heavenly bodies,
as to continue the world in its state. Afterwards there
followed the like in the lower parts, by inundations,
storms, winds, general earthquakes, etc., which, how
ever, being subdued and kept under, there ensued a
more peaceable and lasting harmony, and consent of
things.
It may be said of this fable, that it includes philo
sophy ; and again, that philosophy includes the fable ;
for we know, by faith, that all these things are but the
oracle of sense, long since ceased and decayed ; but the
matter and fabric of the world being justly attributed
to a creator.
XIII.—PROTEUS : OR MATTER.
EXPLAINED OP MATTER AND ITS CHANGES.
Proteus, according to the poets, was Neptune’s herds
man ; an old man, and a most extraordinary prophet,
who understood things past and present, as well as
future : so that besides the business of divination, he
was the revealer and interpreter of all antiquity, and
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
37
secrets of every kind. He lived in a vast cave, where
his custom was to tell over his herd of sea-calves at
noon, and then to sleep. Whoever consulted him had
no other way of obtaining an answer but by binding
him with manacles and fetters ; when he, endeavoring
to free himself, would change into all kinds of shapes
and miraculous forms; as of fire, water, wild beasts,
etc.; till at length he resumed his own shape again.
Explanation. —This fable seems to point at the
secrets of nature, and the states of matter. For the
person of Proteus denotes matter, the oldest of all
things, after God himself ; that resides, as in a cave,
under the vast concavity of the heavens. He is repre
sented as the servant of Neptune, because the various
operations and modifications of matter are principally
wrought in a fluid state. The herd, or flock of Proteus,
seems to be no other than the several kinds of animals,
plants, and minerals, in which matter appears to diffuse
and spend itself; so that after having formed these
several species, and as it were finished its task, it seems
to sleep and repose, without otherwise attempting to
produce any new ones. And this is the moral of
Proteus’s counting his herd, then going to sleep.
This is said to be done at noon, not in the morning
or evening ; by which is meant the time best fitted and
disposed for the production of species, from a matter
duly prepared, and made ready beforehand, and now
lying in a middle state, between its first rudiments and
decline ; which, we learn from sacred history, was the
case at the time of the creation ; when, by the efficacy
of the divine command, matter directly came together,
without any transformation or intermediate changes,
which it affects ; instantly obeyed the order, and
appeared in the form of creatures.
And thus far the fable reaches of Proteus, and his
flock, at liberty and unrestrained. For the universe5
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
with the common structures and fabrics of the creatures,
is the face of matter, not under constraint, or as the
flock wrought upon and tortured by human means.
But if any skilful minister of nature shall apply force
to matter, and by design torture and vex it, in order to
its annihilation, it, on the contrary, being brought
under this necessity, changes and transforms itself into
a strange variety of shapes and appearances; for
nothing but the power of the Creator can annihilate, or
truly destroy it ; so that at length, running through
the whole circle of transformations, and completing its
period, it in some degree restores itself, if the force be
continued. And that method of binding, torturing, or
detaining, will prove the most effectual and expeditious,
which makes use of manacles and fetters ; that is, lays
hold and works upon matter in the extremest degrees.
The addition in the fable that makes Proteus a
prophet, who had the knowledge of things past, present,
and future, excellently agrees with the nature of matter;
as he who knows the properties, the changes, and the
processes of matter, must of necessity understand the
effects and sum of what it does, has done, or can do,
though his knowledge extends not to all the parts and
particulars thereof.
XIV.—MEMNON: OR A YOUTH TOO FORWARD.
EXPLAINED OF THE FATAL PRECIPITANCY OF YOUTH.
The poets made Memnon the son of Aurora, and
bring him to the Trojan war in beautiful armor, and
flushed with popular praise; where, thirsting after
farther glory, and rashly hurrying on to the greatest
enterprises, he engages the bravest warrior of all the
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
39
Greeks, Achilles, and falls by his hand in single
combat. Jupiter, in commisseration of his death, sent
birds to grace his funeral, that perpetually chanted
certain mournful and bewailing dirges. It is also
reported, that the rays of the rising sun, striking his
statue, used to give a lamenting sound.
Explanation. —This fable regards the unfortunate
end of those promising youths, who, like sons of the
morning, elate with empty hopes and glittering out
sides, attempt things beyond their strength : challenge
the bravest heroes ; provoke them to the combat; and
proving unequal, die in their high attempts.
The death of such youths seldom fails to meet with
infinite pity; as no mortal calamity is more moving
and afflicting, than to see the flower of virtue cropped
before its time. Nay, the prime of life enjoyed to the
full, or even to a degree of envy, does not assuage or
moderate the grief occasioned by the untimely death
of such hopeful youths ; but lamentations and bewailings fly, like mournful birds, about their tombs, for a
long while after; especially upon all fresh occasions,
new commotions, and the beginning of great actions,
the passionate desire of them is renewed, as by the
sun’s morning rays.
XV.—TYTHONUS : OR SATIETY.
EXPLAINED OF PREDOMINANT PASSIONS.
It is elegantly fabled by Tythonus, that being exceed
ingly beloved by Aurora, she petitioned Jupiter that
he might prove immortal, thereby to secure herself the
everlasting enjoyment of his company; but through
female inadvertence she forgot to add, that he might
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
never grow old ; so that, though he proved immortal,
he became miserably worn and consumed with age,
insomuch that Jupiter, out of pity, at length trans
formed him to a grasshopper.
Explanation.—This fable seems to contain an
ingenious description of pleasure ; which at first, as it
were, in the morning of the day, is so welcome, that
men pray to have it everlasting, but forget that satiety
and weariness of it will, like old age, overtake them,
though they think not of it; so that at length, when
their appetite for pleasurable actions is gone, their
desires and affections often continue; whence we
commonly find that aged persons delight themselves
with the discourse and remembrance of the things
agreeable to them in their better days. This is very
remarkable in men of a loose, and men of a military
life ; the former whereof are always talking over their
amours, and the latter the exploits of their youth ; like
grasshoppers, that show their vigor only by their
chirping.
XVI.—JUNO’S SUITOR : OR BASENESS.
EXPLAINED OF SUBMISSION AND ABJECTION.
The poets tell us, that Jupiter, to carry on his love
intrigues, assumed many different shapes ; as of a bull,
an eagle, a swan, a golden shower, etc.; but when he
attempted Juno, he turned himself into the most
ignoble and ridiculous creature—even that of a
wretched, wet, weather-beaten, affrighted, trembling,
and half-starved cuckoo.
Explanation.—This a wise fable, and drawn from
the very entrails of morality. The moral is, that men
should not be conceited of themselves, and imagine
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
41
that a discovery of their excellences will always render
them acceptable; for this can only succeed according
to the nature and manners of the person they court, or
solicit ; who, if he be a man not of the same gifts and
endowments, but altogether of a haughty and con
temptuous behavior, here represented by the person of
Juno, they must entirely drop the character that carries
the least show of worth, or gracefulness ; if they pro
ceed upon any other footing, it is downright folly ; nor
is it sufficient to act the deformity of obsequiousness,
unless they really change themselves, and become
abject and contemptible in their persons.
XVII.—CUPID : OR AN ATOM.
EXPLAINED OF THE CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY.
The particulars related by the poets of Cupid, or
Love, do not properly agree to the same person ; yet
they differ only so far, that if the confusion of persons
be rejected, the correspondence may hold. They say,
that Love was the most ancient of all the gods, and
existed before everything else, except Chaos, which is
held coeval therewith. But for Chaos, the ancients
never paid divine honors, nor gave the title of a god
thereto. Love is represented absolutely without pro
genitor, excepting only that he is said to have proceeded
from the egg of Nox ; but that himself begot the gods,
and all things else, on Chaos. His attributes are four,
viz.—1, perpetual infancy ; 2, blindness ; 3, nakedness;
and 4, archery.
There was also another Cupid, or Love, the youngest
son of the gods, born of Venus; and upon him the
attributes of the elder are transferred, with some degree
of correspondence.
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
Explanation.—This fable points at, and enters, the
cradle of nature. Love seems to be the appetite, or
incentive, of the primitive matter ; or, to speak more
distinctly, the natural motion, or moving principle, of
the original corpuscles, or atoms; this being the most
ancient and only power that made and wrought all
things out of matter. It is absolutely without parent,
that is, without cause : for causes are as parents to
effects ; but this power or efficacy could have no natural
cause ; for, excepting God, nothing was before it; and
therefore it could have no efficient in nature. And as
nothing is more inward with nature, it can neither be
a genus nor a form; and therefore, whatever it is, it
must be somewhat positive, though inexpressible.
And if it were possible to conceive its modus and pro
cess. yet it could not be known from its cause, as
being, next to God, the cause of causes, and itself
without a cause. And perhaps we are not to hope that
the modus of it should fall, or be comprehended, under
human inquiry. Whence it is properly feigned to be
the egg of Nox, or laid in the dark.
The divine philosopher declares, that “ God has
made everything beautiful in its season ; and has given
■over the world to our disputes and inquiries : but that
man cannot find out the work which God has wrought,
from its beginning up to its end.” Thus the summary
or collective law of nature, or the principle of love,
impressed by God upon the original particles of all
things, so as to make them attack each other and come
together, by the repetition and multiplication whereof
•all the variety in the universe is produced, can scarce
possibly find full admittance into the thoughts of men,
though some faint notion may be had thereof. The
Greek philosophy is subtile, and busied in discovering
the material principles of things, but negligent and
languid in discovering the principles of motion, in
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
43
■which the energy and efficacy of every operation
consists. And here the Greek philosophers seem per
fectly blind and childish ; for the opinion of the Peri
patetics, as to the stimulus of matter, by privation, is
little more than words, or rather sound than significa
tion. And they who refer it to God, though they do
well therein, yet they do it by a start, and not by
proper degrees of assent; for doubtless there is one
summary, or capital law, in which nature meets,
subordinate to God, viz., the law mentioned in the
passage above quoted from Solomon; or the work
which God has wrought from its *beginning up to its
end.
Democritus, who farther considered this subject,
having first supposed an atom, or corpuscle, of some
dimension or figure, attributed thereto an appetite,
desire, or first motion simply, and another compara
tively, imagining that all things properly tended to
the centre of the world; those containing more matter
falling faster to the centre, and thereby removing, and
in the shock driving away, such as held less. But this
is a slender conceit, and regards too few particulars;
for neither the revolutions of the e celestial bodies, nor
the contractions and expansions of things, can be
reduced to this principle. And for the opinion of
Epicurus, as to the declination and fortuitous agitation
of atoms, this only brings the matter back again to a
trifle, and wraps it up in ignorance and night.
Cupid is elegantly drawn a perpetual child ; for com
pounds are larger things, and have their periods of
age; but the first seeds or atoms of bodies are small,
and remain in a perpetual infant state.
He is again justly represented naked; as all com
pounds may properly be said to be dressed and clothed,
or to assume a personage ; whence nothing remains
truly naked, but the original particles of things.
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
The blindness of Cupid, contains a deep allegory ;
for this same Cupid, Love, or appetite of the world,
seems to have very little foresight, but directs his
steps and motions conformably to what he finds next
him, as blind men do when they feel out their way;
which renders the divine and over-ruling Providence
and foresight the more surprising ; as by a certain
steady law, it brings such a beautiful order and
regularity of things out of what seems extremely
casual, void of design, and, as it were, really blind.
The last attribute of Cupid is archery, viz., a virtue
or power operating at a distance ; for everything that
operates at a distance, may seem, as it were, to dart, or
Shoot with arrows. And whoever allows of atoms and
vacuity, necessarily supposes that the virtue of atoms
operates at a distance ; for without this operation, no
motion could be excited, on account of the vacuum
interposing, but all things would remain sluggish and
unmoved.
As to the other Cupid, he is properly said to be the
youngest sons of the gods, as his power could not take
place before the formation of species, or particular
bodies. The description given us of him transfers the
allegory to morality, though he still retains some
resemblance with the ancient Cupid ; for as Venus
universally excites the affection of association, and the
desire of procreation, her son Cupid applies the affec
tion to individuals ; so that the general disposition
proceeds from Venus, but the more close sympathy
from Cupid. The former depends upon a near approxi
mation of causes, but the latter upon deeper, more
necessitating and uncontrollable principles, as if they
proceeded from the ancient Cupid, on whom all
exquisite sympathies depend.
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45
XVIII.—DIOMED : OR ZEAL.
EXPLAINED OE PERSECUTION, OR ZEAL FOR RELIGION.
Diomed acquired great glory and honor at the Trojan
war, and was highly favored by Pallas, who encouraged
and excited him by no means to spare Venus, if he
should casually meet her in fight. He followed the
advice with too much eagerness and intrepidity, and
accordingly wounded that goddess in her hand. This
presumptuous action remained unpunished for a time,
and when the war was ended he returned with great
glory and renown to his own country, where, finding
himself embroiled with domestic affairs, he retired
into Italy. Here also at first he was well received and
nobly entertained by King Daunus, who, besides other
gifts and honors, erected statues for him over all his
dominions. But upon the first calamity that afflicted
the people after the stranger’s arrival, Daunus imme
diately reflected that he entertained a devoted person
in his palace, an enemy to the gods, and one who had
sacrilegiously wounded a goddess with his sword,
whom it was impious but to touch. To expiate, there
fore, his country’s guilt, he, without regard to the laws
of hospitality, which were less regarded by him than
the laws of religion, directly slew his guest, and com
manded his statues and all his honors to be razed and
abolished. Nor was it safe for others to commiserate
or bewail so cruel a destiny ; but even his companions
in arms, whilst they lamented the death of their leader,
and filled all places with their complaints, were turned
into a kind of swans, which are said, at the approach
of their own death, to chant sweet melancholy dirges.
Explanation.—This fable intimates an extraordinary
and almost singular thing, for no hero besides Diomed
is recorded to have wounded any of the gods. Doubt
less we have here described the nature and fate of a
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man who professedly makes any divine worship or
sect of religion, though in itself vain and light, the
only scope of his actions, and resolves to propagate it
by fire and sword. For although the bloody dissen
sions and differences about religion were unknown to
the ancients, yet so copious and diffusive was their
knowledge, that what they knew not by experience
they comprehended in thought and representation.
Those, therefore, who endeavor to reform or establish
any sect of religion, though vain, corrupt, or infamous
(which is here denoted under the person of Venus),
not by the force of reason, learning, sanctity of man
ners, the weight of arguments, and examples, but
would spread or extirpate it by persecution, pains,
penalties, tortures, fire and sword, may perhaps be
instigated hereto by Pallas, that is, by a certain rigid,
prudential consideration, and a severity of judgment,
by the vigor and efficacy wffiereof they see thoroughly
into the fallacies and fictions of the delusions of this
kind; and through aversion to depravity and a wellmeant zeal, these men usually for a time acquire great
fame and glory, and are by the vulgar, to whom no
moderate measures can be acceptable, extolled and
almost adored, as the only patrons and protectors of
truth and religion, men of any other disposition seem
ing, in comparison with these, to be lukewarm, meanspirited, and cowardly. This fame and felicity, how
ever, seldom endures to the end ; but all violence,
unless it escapes the reverses and changes of things by
untimely death, is commonly unprosperous in the
issue ; and if a change of affairs happens, and that sect
of religion which was persecuted and oppressed gains
strength and rises again, then the zeal and warm
endeavors of this sort of men are condemned, their
very name becomes odious, and all their honors ter
minate in disgrace.
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4:7
As to the point that Diomed. should be slain by his
hospitable entertainer, this denotes that religious dis
sensions may cause treachery, bloody animosities, and
deceit, even between the nearest friends.
That complaining or bewailing should not, in so
enormous a case, be permitted to friends affected by
the catastrophe without punishment, includes this
prudent admonition, that almost in all kinds of wicked
ness and depravity men have still room left for com
miseration, so that they who hate the crime may yet
pity the person and bewail his calamity, from a
principle of humanity and good nature ; and to forbid
the overflowings and intercourses of pity upon such
occasions were the extremest of evils ; yet in the cause
of religion and impiety the very commiserations of
men are noted and suspected. On the other hand, the
lamentations and complainings of the followers and
attendants of Diomed, that is, of men of the same sect
or persuasion, are usually very sweet, agreeable, and
moving, like the dying notes of swans, or the birds of
Diomed. This is also a noble and remarkable part of
the allegory, denoting that the last words of those who
suffer for the sake of religion strongly affect and sway
men’s minds, and leave a lasting impression upon the
sense and memory.
XIX.—DAEDALUS : OR MECHANICAL SKILL.
EXPLAINED OF ARTS AND ARTISTS IN KINGDOMS
AND STATES. •
The ancients have left us a description of mechanical
skill, industry, and curious arts converted to ill uses,
in the person of Daedalus, a most ingenious but
execrable artist. This Daedalus was banished for the
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murder of his brother artist and rival, yet found a kind
reception in his banishment from the kings and states
where he came. He raised many incomparable edifices
to the honor of the gods, and invented many new con
trivances for the beautifying and ennobling of cities
and public places, but still he was most famous for
wicked inventions. Among the rest, by his abominable
industry and destructive genius, he assisted in the fatal
and infamous production of the monster Minotaur,
that devourer of promising youths. And then, to
cover one mischief with another, and provide for the
security of this monster, he invented and built a
labyrinth ; a work infamous for its end and design?
but admirable and prodigious for art and workmanship.
After this, that he might not only be celebrated for
wicked inventions, but be sought after, as well for
prevention, as for instruments of mischief, he formed
that ingenious device of his clue, which led directly
through all the windings of the labyrinth. This
Daedalus was persecuted by Minos with the utmost
severity, diligence, and inquiry ; but he always found
refuge and means of escaping. Lastly, endeavoring to
teach his son Icarus the art of flying, the novice,
trusting too much to his wings, fell from his towering
flight, and was drowned in the sea.
Explanation.—The sense of the fable runs thus.
It first denotes envy, which is continually upon the
watch, and strangely prevails among excellent artificers;
for no kind of people are observed to be more im
placably and destructively envious to one another than
these.
In the next place, it observes an impolitic and im
provident kind of punishment inflicted upon Daedalus
—that of banishment; for good workmen are gladly
received everywhere, so that banishment to an excellent
artificer is scarce any punishment at all; whereas other
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conditions of life cannot easily flourish from home.
For the admiration of artists is propagated and increased
among foreigners and strangers ; it being a principle
in the minds of men to slight and despise the mechani
cal operators of their own nation.
The succeeding part of the fable is plain, concerning
the use of mechanical arts, whereto human life stands
greatly indebted, as receiving from this treasury
numerous particulars for the service of religion, the
ornament of civil society, and the whole provision and
apparatus of life; but then the same magazine supplies
instruments of lust, cruelty, and death. For, not to
mention the arts of luxury and debauchery, we plainly
see how far the business of exquisite poisons, guns,
engines of war, and such kind of destructive inven
tions, exceeds the cruelty and barbarity of the Minotaur
himself.
The addition of the labyrinth contains a beautiful
allegory, representing the nature of mechanic arts in
general ; for all ingenious and accurate mechanical
inventions may be conceived as a labyrinth, which, by
reason of their subtilty, intricacy, crossing, and inter
fering with one another, and the apparent resemblances
they have among themselves, scarce any power of the
judgment can unravel and distinguish ; so that they
are only to be understood and traced by the clue of
experience.
It is no less prudently added, that he who invented
the windings of the labyrinth, should also show the
use and management of the clue ; for mechanical arts
have an ambiguous or double use, and serve as well to
produce as to prevent mischief and destruction ; so
that their virtue almost destroys or unwinds itself.
Unlawful arts, and indeed frequently arts themselves,
are persecuted by Minos, that is, by laws, which pro
hibit and forbid their use among the people ; but
D
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notwithstanding this, they are hid, concealed, retained,
and everywhere find reception and sknlking-places ; a
thing well observed by Tacitus of the astrologers and
fortune-tellers of his time. “ These,” says he, “ are a
kind of men that will always be prohibited, and yet
will always be retained in our city.”
But lastly, all unlawful and vain arts, of what kind
soever, lose their reputation in tract of time; grow
contemptible and perish, through their over-confidence,
like Icarus ; being commonly unable to perform what
they boasted. And to say the truth, such arts are
better suppressed by their own vain pretensions, than
checked or restrained by the bridle of laws.
XX.—ERICTHONIUS : OR IMPOSTURE.
EXPLAINED OF THE IMPROPER USE OF FORCE IN NATURAL
(PHILOSOPHY.
The poets feign that Vulcan attempted the chastity
of Minerva, and impatient of refusal, had recourse to
force; the consequence of which was the birth of
Ericthonius, whose body from the middle upwards was
comely and well-proportioned, but his thighs and legs
small, shrunk, and deformed, like an eel. Conscious
of this defect, he became the inventor of chariots, so
as to show the graceful, but conceal the deformed part
of his body.
Explanation.—This strange fable seems to carry this
meaning. Art is here represented] under the person of
Vulcan, by reason of the various uses it makes of fire ;
and nature under the person of Minerva, by reason of
the industry employed in her works. Art, therefore,
whenever it offers violence to nature, in order to
conquer, subdue, and bend her to its purpose, by
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51
tortures and force of all kinds, seldom obtains the end
proposed ; yet upon great struggle and application,
there proceed certain imperfect births, or lame abortive
works, specious in appearance, but weak and unstable
in usd ; which are, nevertheless, with great pomp and
deceitful appearances, triumphantly carried about and
shown by impostors. A procedure very familiar, and
remarkable in chemical productions, and new mecha
nical inventions ; especially when the inventors rather
hug their errors than improve upon them, and go on
struggling with nature, not courting her.
XXI.—DEUCALION : OR RESTITUTION.
EXPLAINED OF A USEFUL HINT IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
The poets tell us that the inhabitants of the old
world being totally destroyed by the universal deluge,
excepting Deucalion and Pyrrha, these two, desiring
with zealous and fervent devotion to restore mankind,
received this oracle for answer, that “ they should
succeed by throwing their mother’s bones behind
them.” This at first cast them into great sorrow and
despair, because, as all things were levelled by the
deluge, it was in vain to seek their mother’s tomb ;
but at length they understood the expression of the
oracle to signify the stones of the earth, which is
esteemed the mother of all things.
Explanation. —This fable seems to reveal a secret of
nature, and correct an error familiar to the mind; for
men’s ignorance leads them to expect the renovation or
restoration of things from their corruption and remains,
as the phoenix is said to be restored out of its ashes ;
which is a very improper procedure, because such kind
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of materials have finished their course, and are become
absolutely unfit to supply the first rudiments of the
same things again; whence, in cases of renovation,
recourse should be had to more common principles.
XXII.—NEMESIS : OR THE VICISSITUDE OF
THINGS.
EXPLAINED OF THE REVERSES OF FORTUNE.
Nemesis is represented as a goddess venerated by
all, but feared by the powerful and the fortunate. She
is said to be the daughter of Nox and Oceanus. She is
drawn with wings, and a crown ; a javelin of ash in
her right hand ; a glass containing Ethiopians in her
left; and riding upon a stag.
Explanation.—The fable receives this explanation.
The word Nemesis manifestly signifies revenge, or
retribution ; for the office of this goddess consisted in
interposing, like the Roman tribunes, with an “ I forbid
it,” in all courses of constant and perpetual felicity, so
as not only to chastise haughtiness, but also to repay
oven innocent and moderate happiness with adversity ;
as if it were decreed, that none of human race should
be admitted to the banquet of the gods, but for sport.
And, indeed, to read over that chapter of Pliny wherein
he has collected the miseries and misfortunes of
Augustus Cassar, whom of all mankind one would
judge most fortunate,—as he had a certain art of using
and enjoying prosperity, with a mind no way tumid,
light, effeminate, confused, or melancholic,—one cannot
but think this a very great and powerful goddess, who
could bring such a victim to her altar.
The parents of this goddess were Oceanus and Nox ;
that is, the fluctuating change of things, and the obscure
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53
and secret divine decrees. The changes of things are
aptly represented by the Ocean, on account of its
perpetual ebbing and flowing ; and secret providence
is justly expressed by Night. Even the heathenshave
observed this secret Nemesis of the night, or the
difference betwixt divine and human judgment.
Wings are given to Nemesis, because of the sudden
and unforeseen changes of things ; for, from the earliest
account of time, it has been common for great and
prudent men to fall by the dangers they most despised.
Thus Cicero, when admonished by Brutus of the
infidelity and rancor of Octavius, coolly wrote back,
111 cannot, however, but be obliged to you, Brutus, as
I ought, for informing me, though of such a trifle.”
Nemesis also has her crown, by reason of the invi
dious and malignant nature of the vulgar, who generally
rejoice, triumph, and crown her, at the fall of the
fortunate and the powerful. And the javelin in her
right hand, it has regard to those whom she has actually
struck and transfixed. But whoever escapes her
stroke, or feels not actual calamity or misfortune, she
affrights with a black and dismal sight in her left
hand ; for doubtless, mortals on the highest pinnacle
of felicity have a prospect of death, diseases, calamities,
perfidious friends, undermining enemies, reverses of
fortune, etc., represented by the Ethiopians in her
glass. Thus Virgil, with great elegance, describing the
battle of Actium, says of Cleopatra, that, “ she did not
yet perceive the two asps behind her ” ; but soon after,
which way soever she turned, she saw whole troops of
Ethiopians still before her.
Lastly, it is significantly added, that Nemesis rides
upon a stag, which is a very long-lived creature ; for
though perhaps some, by an untimely death in youth,
may prevent or escape this goddess, yet they who
enjoy a long flow of happiness and power, doubtless
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
become subject to her at length, and are brought to
yield.
XXIII.—ACHELOUS : OR BATTLE.
EXPLAINED OF WAR BY INVASION.
The ancients relate, that Hercules and Achelous being
rivals in the courtship of Deianira, the matter was
contested by single combat; when Achelous having
transformed himself, as he had power to do, into
various shapes, by way of trial; at length, in the form
of a fierce wild bull, prepares himself for the fight;
but Hercules still retains his human shape, engages
sharply with him, and in the issue broke off one of
the bull’s horns ; and now Achelous, in great pain and
fright, to redeem his horn, presents Hercules with the
cornucopia.
Explanation.—This fable relates to military expedi
tions and preparations ; for the preparation of war on
the defensive side, here denoted by Achelous, appears
in various shapes, whilst the invading side has but one
simple form, consisting either in an army, or perhaps a
fleet. But the country that expects the invasion is
employed infinite ways, in fortifying towns, blockading
passes, rivers, and ports, raising soldiers, disposing
garrisons, building and breaking down bridges, pro
curing aids, securing provisions, arms, ammunition,
etc. So that there appears a new face of things every
day ; and at length, when the country is sufficiently
fortified and prepared, it represents to the life the form
and threats of a fierce fighting bull.
On the other side, the invader presses on to the fight,
fearing to be distressed in an enemy’s country. And
if after the battle he remains master of the field, and
has now broke, as it were, the horn of his enemy, the
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
55
besieged, of course, retire inglorious, affrighted, and
dismayed, to their stronghold, there endeavoring to
secure themselves, and repair their strength ; leaving,
at the same time, their country a prey to the conqueror,
which is well expressed by the Amalthean horn, or
cornucopia.
XXIV.—DIONYSUS : OR BACCHUS.
EXPLAINED OF THE PASSIONS.
The fable runs, that Semele, Jupiter’s mistress,
having bound him by an inviolable oath to grant her
an unknown request, desired he would embrace her in
the same form and manner he used to embrace Juno ;
and the promise being irrevocable, she was burnt to
death with lightning in the performance. The embry
however, was sewed up, and carried in Jupiter’s thigh
till the complete time of its birth ; but the burthen,
thus rendering the father lame, and causing him pain,
the child was thence called Dionysus. When born, he
was committed for some years, to be nursed by Pros
erpina ; and when grown up, appeared with so effe
minate a face, that his sex seemed somewhat doubtful.
He also died, and was buried for a time, but afterwards
revived. When a youth, he first introduced the culti
vation and dressing of vines, the method of preparing
wine, and taught the use thereof ; whence becoming
famous, he subdued the world, even to the utmost
bounds of the Indies. He rode in a chariot drawn by
tigers. There danced about him certain deformed
demons called Cobali, etc. The Muses also joined in
his train. He married Ariadne, who was deserted by
Theseus. The ivy was sacred to him. He was also
held the inventor and institutor of religious rites and
ceremonies, but such as were wild, frantic and full of
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
corruption and cruelty. He had also the power of
striking men with frenzies. Pentheus and Orpheus
were torn to pieces by the frantic women at his orgies ;
the first for climbing a tree to behold their outrageous
ceremonies, and the other for the music of his harp.
But the acts of this god are much entangled and con
founded with those of Jupiter.
Explanation.—This fable seems to contain a little
system of morality, so that there is scarce any better
invention in all ethics. Under the history of Bacchus
is drawn the nature of unlawful desire or affection,
and disorder; for the appetite and thirst of apparent
good is the mother of all unlawful desire, though ever
so destructive, and all unlawful desires are conceived
in unlawful wishes or requests, rashly indulged or
granted before they are well understood or considered,
and when the affection begins to grow warm, the
mother of it (the nature of good) is destroyed and
burnt up by the heat. And whilst an unlawful desire
lies in the embryo, or unripened in the mind, which
is its father, and here represented by Jupiter, it is
cherished and concealed, especially in the inferior part
of the mind, corresponding to the thigh of the body,
where pain twitches and depresses the mind so far as
to render its resolutions and actions imperfect and
lame. And even after this child of the mind is con
firmed, and gains strength by consent and habit, and
comes forth into action, it must still be nursed by
Proserpina for a time; that is, it skulks and hides its
head in a clandestine manner, as it were under ground,
till at length, when the checks of shame and fear are
removed, and the requisite boldness acquired, it either
assumes the pretext of some virtue, or openly despises
infamy. And it is justly observed, that every vehement
passion appears of a doubtful sex, as having the strength
of a man at first, but at last the impotence of a woman.
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57
It is also excellently added, that Bacchus died and rose
again ; for the affections sometimes seem to die and beno more ; but there is no trusting them, even though
they were buried, being always apt and ready to rise
again whenever the occasion or object offers.
That Bacchus should be the inventor of wine carries
a fine allegory with it; for every affection is cunning
and subtile in discovering a proper manner to nourish
and feed it; and of all things known to mortals, wine
is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and
inflaming passions of all kinds, being indeed like a.
common fuel to all.
It is again with great elegance observed of Bacchus,,
that he subdued provinces, and undertook endless
expeditions, for the affections never rest satisfied with
what they enjoy, but with an endless and insatiable
appetite, thirst after something further. And tigers
are prettily feigned to draw the chariot; for as soon as.
any affection shall, from going on foot, be advanced to
ride, it triumphs over reason, and exerts its cruelty,,
fierceness, and strength against all that oppose it.
It is also humorously imagined, that ridiculous
demons dance and frisk about this chariot; for every
passion produces indecent, disorderly, interchangeable,
deformed motions in the eyes, countenance, and
gesture, so that the person under the impulse, whether
of anger, insult, love, etc., though to himself, he may
seen grand, lofty, or obliging, yet in the eyes of others
appears mean, contemptible, or ridiculous.
The Muses also are found in the train of Bacchus,,
for there is scarce any passion without its art, science,,
or doctrine to court and flatter it ; but in this respect
the indulgence of men of genius has greatly detracted
from the majesty of the Muses, who ought to be the
leaders and conductors of human life, and not the
handmaids of the passions.
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
The allegory of Bacchus falling in love with a cast
mistress, is extremely noble ; for it is certain that the
affections always court and covet what has been rejected
upon experience. And all those who by serving and
indulging their passions immensely raise the value of
enjoyment, should know, that whatever they covet and
pursue, whether riches, pleasure, glory, learning, or
anything else, they only pursue those things that have
been forsaken and cast off with contempt by great
numbers in all ages, after possession and experience.
Nor is it without a mystery that the ivy was sacred
to Bacchus, and this for two reasons : first, because ivy
is an evergreen, or flourishes in the winter; and
secondly, because it winds and creeps about so many
things, as trees, walls, and buildings, and raises itself
above them. As to the first, every passion grows fresh,
strong, and vigorous by opposition and prohibition, as
it were by a kind of contrast or antiperistasis, like the
ivy in the winter. And for the second, the predominant
passion of the mind throws itself, like the ivy, round
all human actions, entwines all our resolutions, and
perpetually adheres to, and mixes itself among, or even
overtops them.
And no wonder that superstitious rites and cere
monies are attributed to Bacchus, when almost every
ungovernable passion grows wanton and luxuriant in
corrupt religions ; nor again, that fury and frenzy
should be sent and dealt out by him, because every
passion is a short frenzy, and if it be vehement, lasting,
and take deep root, it terminates in madness. And
hence the allegory of Pentheus and Orpheus being
torn to pieces is evident ; for every headstrong passion
is extremely bitter, severe, inveterate, and revengeful
upon all curious inquiry, wholesome admonition, free
counsel and persuasion.
Lastly, the confusion between the persons of Jupiter
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59
and Bacchus will justly admit of an allegory, because
noble and meritorious actions may sometimes proceed
from virtue, sound reason, and magnanimity, and
sometimes again from a concealed passion and secret
desire of ill, however they may be extolled and praised,
insomuch that it is not easy to distinguish betwixt the
acts of Bacchus and the acts of Jupiter.
XXV.—ATALANTA AND HIPPOMENES :
OR GAIN.
EXPLAINED OF THE CONTEST BETWIXT ART AND NATURE.
Atalanta, who was exceeding fleet, contended with
Hippomenes in the course, on condition that if Hippomenes won, he should espouse her, or forfeit his life if
he lost. The match was very unequal, for Atalanta
had conquered numbers, to their destruction. Hippo
menes, therefore, had recourse to stratagem. He
procured three golden apples, and purposely carried
them with him : they started ; Atalanta outstripped
him soon ; then Hippomenes bowled one of his apples
before her, across the course, in order not only to make
her stoop, but to draw her out of the path. She,
prompted by female curiosity, and the beauty of the
golden fruit, starts from the course to take up the apple.
Hippomenes, in the mean time, holds on his way, and
steps before her ; but she, by her natural swiftness,
soon fetches up her lost ground, and leaves him again
behind. Hippomenes, however, by rightly timing his
second and third throw, at length won the race, not by
his swiftness, but his cunning.
Explanation.—This fable seems to contain a noble
allegory of the contest betwixt art and nature. For art
here denoted by Atalanta, is much swifter, or more
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PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
expeditious in its operations than nature, when all
obstacles and impediments are removed, and sooner
arrives at its end. This appears almost in every
instance. Thus fruit comes slowly from the kernel,
but soon by inoculation or incision ; clay, left to itself,
is a long time in acquiring a stony hardness, but fs
presently burnt by fire into brick. So again in human
life, nature is a long while in alleviating and abolish
ing the remembrance of pain, and assuaging the troubles
of the mind ; but moral philosophy, which is the art
of living, performs it presently. Yet this prerogative
and singular efficacy of art is stopped and retarded to
the infinite detriment of human life, by certain golden
apples ; for there is no one science or art that con
stantly holds on its true and proper course to the end,
but they are all continually stopping short, forsaking
the track, and turning aside to profit and convenience,
exactly like Atalanta. Whence it is no wonder that
art gets not the victory over nature, nor, according to
the condition of the contest, brings her under sub
jection ; but, on the contrary, remains subject to her,
as a wife to a husband.
XXVI.—PROMETHEUS : OR THE STATE OF MAN.
EXPLAINED OF AN OVER-RULING PROVIDENCE, AND OF
HUMAN NATURE.
The ancients relate that man was the work of Pro
metheus, and formed of clay ; only the artificer mixed
in with the mass, particles taken from different animals.
And being desirous to improve his workmanship, and
endow, as well as create, the human race, he stole up
to heaven with a bundle of birch-rods, and kindling
them at the chariot of the Sun, thence brought down
fire to the earth for the service of men.
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61
They add, that for this meritorious act Prometheus
’was repayed with ingratitude by mankind, so that,
forming a conspiracy, they arraigned both him and his
invention before Jupiter. But the matter was other
wise received than they imagined ; for the accusation
proved extremely grateful to Jupiter and the gods,
insomuch that, delighted with the action, they not only
indulged mankind the use of fire, but moreover
conferred upon them a most acceptable and desirable
present, namely, perpetual youth.
But men, foolishly overjoyed hereat, laid this present
•of the gods upon an ass, who, in returning back with
it, being extremely thirsty, strayed to a fountain. The
serpent, who was guardian thereof, would not suffer
him to drink, but upon condition of receiving the
burden he carried, whatever it should be. The silly
.ass complied, and thus the perpetual renewal of youth
was, for a drop of water, transferred from men to the
race of serpents.
Prometheus, not desisting from his unwarrantable
practices, though now reconciled to mankind, after
they were thus tricked of their present, but still con
tinuing inveterate against Jupiter, had the boldness to
attempt deceit, even in a sacrifice, and is said to have
•once offered up two bulls to Jupiter, but so as in the
hide of one of them to wrap all the flesh and fat of
both, and stuffing out the other hide only with the
bones ; then in a religious and devout manner, gave
Jupiter his choice of the two. Jupiter, detesting this
sly fraud and hypocrisy, but having thus an opporunity of punishing the offender, purposely chose the
mock bull.
And now giving way to revenge, but finding he
could not chastise the insolence of Prometheus without
afflicting the human race (in the production whereof
Prometheus had strangely and insufferably prided him
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self), he commanded Vulcan to form a beautiful and
graceful woman, to whom every god presented a certain
gift, whence she was called Pandora. They put into
her hands an elegant box, containing all sorts of
miseries and misfortunes ; but Hope was placed at the
bottom of it. With this box she first goes to Pro
metheus, to try if she could prevail upon him to receive
and open it; but he, being upon his guard, warily
refused the offer. Upon this refusal, she comes to hisbrother Epimetheus, a man of a very different temper,
who rashly and inconsiderately opens the box. When
finding all kinds of miseries and misfortunes issued
out of it, he grew wise too late, and with great hurry
and struggle endeavored to clap the cover on again ;
but with all his endeavor could scarce keep in Hope,,
which lay at the bottom.
Lastly, Jupiter arraigned Prometheus of many
heinous crimes : as that he formerly stole fire from
heaven; that he contemptuously and deceitfully
mocked him by a sacrifice of bones ; that he despised
his present, adding withal a new crime, that he
attempted to ravish Pallas : for all which, he was
sentenced to be bound in chains, and doomed to per
petual torments. Accordingly, by Jupiter’s command,
he was brought to Mount Caucasus, and there fastened
to a pillar, so firmly that he could no way stir. A
vulture or eagle stood by him, which in the daytime
gnawed and consumed his liver ; but in the night thewasted parts were supplied again ; whence matter for
his pain was never wanting.
They relate, however, that his punishment had an
end; for Hercules sailing the ocean, in a cup, or
pitcher, presented him by the Sun, came at length to
Caucasus, shot the eagle with his arrows, and set
Prometheus free. In certain nations, also, there wereinstituted particular games of the torch, to the honor
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63
of Prometheus, in which they who ran for the prize
carried lighted torches ; and as any one of these torches
happened to go out, the bearer withdrew himself, and
gave way to the next ; and that person was allowed to
win the prize who first brought in his lighted torch to
the goal.
Explanation. —This fable contains and enforces
many just and serious considerations; some whereof
have been long since well observed, but some again
remain perfectly untouched. Prometheus clearly and
expressly signifies Providence ; for of all things in
nature, the formation and endowment of man was
singled out by the ancients, and esteemed the peculiar
work of Providence. The reason hereof seems,
1. That the nature of man includes a mind and under
standing, which is the seat of Providence. 2. That
it is harsh and incredible to suppose reason and mind
should be raised, and drawn out of senseless and irra
tional principles ; whence it becomes almost inevitable,,
that providence is implanted in the human mind in
conformity with, and by the direction and the design
of the greater over-ruling Providence. But, 3. The
principal cause is this : that man seems to be the thing
in which the whole world centres, with respect to final
causes; so that if he were away, all other things would
stray and fluctuate, without end or intention, or become
perfectly disjointed, and out of frame ; for all things,
are made subservient to man, and he receives use and
benefit from them all. Thus the revolutions, places,
and periods, of the celestial bodies, serve him for dis
tinguishing times and seasons, and for dividing the
world into different regions ; the meteors afford him
prognostications of the weather ; the winds sail our
ships, drive our mills, and move our machines; and
the vegetables and animals of all kinds either afford
US matter for houses and habitations, clothing, food,
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physic, or tend to ease, or delight, to support, or refresh
us : so that everything in nature seems not made for
itself, but for man.
And it is not without reason added, that the mass of
matter whereof man was formed, should be mixed up
with particles taken from different animals, and
wrought in with the clay, because it is certain, that of
all the things in the universe, man is the most com
pounded and recompounded body ; so that the ancients
not improperly styled him a Microcosm, or little world
within himself. For although the chemists have
absurdly, and too literally, wrested and perverted the
elegance of the term microcosm, whilst they pretend
to find all kind of mineral and vegetable matters, or
something corresponding to them, in man, yet it
remains firm and unshaken, that the human body is of
all substances the most mixed and organical ; whence
it has surprising powers and faculties : for the powers
of simple bodies are but few, though certain and quick;
as being little broken, or weakened, and not counter
balanced by mixture : but excellence and quantity of
energy reside in mixture and composition.
Man, however, in his first origin, seems to be a
defenceless naked creature, slow in assisting himself,
and standing in need of numerous things. Prometheus,
therefore, hastened to the invention of fire, which
supplies and administers to nearly all human uses and
necessities, insomuch that, if the soul may be called
the form of forms, if the hand may be called the
instrument of instruments, fire may as properly be
•called the assistant of assistants, or helper of helps; for
hence proceed numberless operations, hence all the
mechanic arts, and hence infinite assistances are
afforded to the sciences themselves.
The manner wherein Prometheus stole this fire is
^properly described from the nature of the thing; he
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being said to have done it by applying a rod of birch
to the chariot of the Sun : for birch is used in striking
and beating, which clearly denotes the generation of
fire to be from the violent percussions and collisions of
bodies ; whereby the matters struck are subtilised,
rarefied, put into motion, and so prepared to receive
the heat of the celestial bodies ; whence they, in a
clandestine and secret manner, collect and snatch fire,
as it were by stealth, from the chariot of the Sun.
The next is a remarkable part of the fable, which
represents that men, instead of gratitude and thanks,
fell into indignation and expostulation, accusing both
Prometheus and his fire to Jupiter,—and yet the accusa
tion proved highly pleasing to Jupiter; so that he, for
this reason, crowned these benefits of mankind with a
new bounty. Here it may seem strange that the sin of
ingratitude to a creator and benefactor, a sin so heinous
as to include almost all others, should meet with appro
bation and reward. But the allegory has another view,
and denotes, that the accusation and arraignment, both
of human nature and human art among mankind,
proceeds from a most noble and laudable temper of the
mind, and tends to a very good purpose ; whereas the
contrary temper is odious to the gods, and unbeneficial
in itself. For they who break into extravagant praises
of human nature and the arts in vogue, and who lay
themselves out in admiring the things they already
possess, and will needs have the sciences cultivated
among them, to be thought absolutely perfect and
complete, in the first place, show little regard to
the divine nature, whilst they extol their own
inventions almost as high as his perfection. In the
next place, men of this temper are unserviceable and
prejudicial in life, whilst they imagine themselves
already got to the top of things, and there rest, without
farther inquiry. On the contrary, they who arraign
E
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and accuse both nature and art, and are always full of
complaints against them, not only preserve a more just
and modest sense of mind, but are also perpetually
stirred up to fresh industry and new discoveries. Is
not, then, the ignorance and fatality of mankind to be
extremely pitied, whilst they remain slaves to the
arrogance of a few of their own fellows, and are
dotingly fond of that scrap of Grecian knowledge, the
Peripatetic philosophy; and this to such a degree, as
not only to think all accusation or arraignment thereof
useless, but even hold it suspect and dangerous ? Cer
tainly the procedure of Empedocles, though furious—
but especially that of Democritus (who with great
modesty complained that all things were abstruse;
that we know nothing; that truth lies hid in deep pits;
that falsehood is strangely joined and twisted along
with truth, etc.)—is to be preferred before the con
fident, assuming, and dogmatical school of Aristotle.
Mankind are, therefore, to be admonished, that the
arraignment of nature and of art is pleasing to the
gods; and that a sharp and vehement accusation of
Prometheus, though a creator, a founder, and a master,
obtained new blessings and presents from the divine
bounty, and proved more sound and serviceable than a
diffusive harangue of praise and gratulation. And let
men be assured that the fond opinion that they have
already acquired enough, is a principal reason why
they have acquired so little.
That the perpetual flower of youth should be the
present which mankind received as a reward for their
accusation, carries this moral : that the ancients seem
not to have despaired of discovering methods, and
remedies, for retarding old age, and prolonging the
period of human life, but rather reckoned it among
those things which, through sloth and want of diligent
inquiry, perish and come to nothing, after having been
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67
once undertaken, than among such as are absolutely
impossible, or placed beyond the reach of the human
power. For they signify and intimate from the true
use of fire, and the just and strenuous accusation and
conviction of the errors of art, that the divine bounty
is not wanting to men in such kind of presents, but
that men indeed are wanting to themselves, and lay
such an inestimable gift upon the back of a slow-paced
ass ; that is, upon the back of the heavy, dull, lingering
thing, experience; from whose sluggish and tortoise
pace proceeds that ancient complaint of the shortness
of life, and the slow advancement of arts. And
certainly it may well seem, that the two faculties of
reasoning and experience are not hitherto properly
joined and coupled together, but to be still new gifts of
the gods, separately laid, the one upon the back of a
light bird, or abstract philosophy, and the other upon
an ass, or slow-paced practice and trial. And yet good
hopes might be conceived of this ass, if it were not for
his thirst and the accidents of the way. For we
judge, that if any one would constantly proceed, by a
certain law and method, in the road of experience, and
not by the way thirst after such experiments as make
for profit or ostentation, nor exchange his burden, or
quit the original design for the sake of these, he might
be a useful bearer of a new and accumulated divine
bounty to mankind.
That this gift of perpetual youth should pass from
men to serpents, seems added by way of ornament, and
illustration to the fable ; perhaps intimating, at■ the
same time, the shame it is for men, that they, with
their fire, and numerous arts, cannot procure to them
selves those things which nature has bestowed upon
many other creatures.
The sudden reconciliation of Prometheus to man
kind, after being disappointed of their hopes, contains
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a prudent and useful admonition. It points out the
levity and temerity of men in new experiments, when,
not presently succeeding, or answering to expectation,
they precipitantly quit their new undertakings, hurry
back to their old ones, and grow reconciled thereto.
After the fable has described the state of man, with
regard to arts and intellectual matters, it passes on to
religion ; for after the inventing and settling of arts,
follows the establishment of divine worship, which
hypocrisy presently enters into and corrupts. So that
by the two sacrifices we have elegantly painted the
person of a man truly religious, and of an hypocrite.
One of these sacrifices contained the fat, or the portion
of God, used for burning and incensing; thereby
denoting affection and zeal, offered up to his glory. It
likewise contained the bowels, which are expressive of
charity, along with the good and useful flesh. But the
other contained nothing more than dry bones, which
nevertheless stuffed out the hide, so as to make it
resemble a fair, beautiful, and magnificent sacrifice;
hereby finely denoting the external and empty rites
and barren ceremonies, wherewith men burden and
stuff out the divine worship,—things rather intended
for show and ostentation than conducing to piety.
Nor are mankind simply content with this mock
worship of God, but also impose and father it upon
him, as if he had chosen and ordained it. Certainly
the prophet, in the person of God, has a fine expostu
lation, as to this matter of choice :—“ Is this the
fasting which I have chosen, that a man should afflict
his soul for a day, and bow down his head like
bulrush ?”
After thus touching the state of religion, the fable
next turns to manners, and the conditions of human
life. And though it be a very common, yet is it a just
interpretation, that Pandora denotes the pleasures and
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
69
licentiousness which the cultivation and luxury of the
arts of civil life introduce, as it were, by the instru
mental efficacy of fire; whence the works of the
voluptuary arts are properly attributed to Vulcan,
the God of Fire. And hence infinite miseries and
calamities have proceeded to the minds, the bodies,
and the fortunes of men, together with a late repentance;
and this not only in each man’s particular, but also in
kingdoms and states ; for wars, and tumults, and
tyrannies, have all arisen from this same fountain, or
box of Pandora.
It is worth observing, how beautifully and elegantly
the fable has drawn two reigning characters in human,
life, and given two examples, or tablatures of them,
under the persons of Prometheus and Epimetheus.
The followers of Epimetheus are improvident, see not
far before them, and prefer such things as are agreeable
for the present; whence they are oppressed with
numerous straits, difficulties, and calamities, with
which they almost continually struggle; but in the
meantime gratify their own temper, and, for want of a
better knowledge of things, feed their minds with
many vain hopes ; and as with so many pleasing
dreams, delight themselves, and sweeten the miseries
of life.
But the followers of Prometheus are the prudent,
wary men, that look into futurity, and cautiously
guard against, prevent, and undermine many calamities
and misfortunes. But this watchful, provident temper,
is attended with a deprivation of numerous pleasures,
and the loss of various delights, whilst such men debar
themselves the use even of innocent things, and what
is still worse, rack and torture themselves with cares,
fears, and disquiets ; being bound fast to the pillar of
necessity, and tormented with numberless thoughts
(which for their swiftness are well compared to an
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eagle), that continually wound, tear, and gnaw their
liver or mind, unless, perhaps, they find some small
remission by intervals, or as it were at nights ; but
then new anxieties, dreads, and fears, soon return
again, as it were in the morning. And, therefore,
very few men, of either temper, have secured to them
selves the advantages of providence, and kept clear of
disquiets, troubles, and misfortunes.
Nor indeed can any man obtain this end without the
assistance of Hercules; that is, of such fortitude and
constancy of mind as stands prepared against every
event, and remains indifferent to every change ;
looking forward without being daunted, enjoying the
good without disdain, and enduring the bad without
impatience. And it must be observed, that even Pro
metheus had not the power to free himself, but owed
his deliverance to another ; for no natural inbred force
and fortitude could prove equal to such a task. The
power of releasing him came from the utmost confines
of the ocean, and from the sun ; that is, from Apollo,
or knowledge ; and again, from a due consideration of
the uncertainty, instability, and fluctuating state of
human life, which is aptly represented by sailing the
ocean. Accordingly, Virgil has prudently joined these
two together, accounting him happy who knows the
causes of things, and has conquered all his fears,
apprehensions, and superstitions.
It is added, with great elegance, for supporting and
confirming the human mind, that the great hero who
thus delivered him sailed the ocean in a cup, or pitcher,
to prevent fear, or complaint; as if, through the
narrowness of our nature, or a too great fragility
thereof, we were absolutely incapable of that fortitude
and constancy to which Seneca finely alludes, when
he says, “ It is a noble thing, at once to participate in
the frailty of man and the security of a god.”
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71
We have hitherto, that we might not break the
connection of things, designedly omitted the last crime,
of Prometheus—that of attempting the chastity of
Minerva—which heinous offence it doubtless was, that
caused the punishment of having his liver gnawed by
the vulture. The meaning seems to be this,—that
when men are puffed up with arts and knowledge,
they often try to subdue even the divine wisdom and
bring it under the dominion of sense and reason,
whence inevitably follows a perpetual and restless
rending and tearing of the mind. A sober and humble
distinction must, therefore, be made betwixt divine
and human things, and betwixt the oracles of sense
and faith, unless mankind had rather choose an here
tical religion, and a fictitious and romantic philosophy.
The last particular in the fable is the Games of the
Torch, instituted to Prometheus, which again relates
to arts and sciences, as well as the invention of fire,
for the commemoration and celebration whereof these
games were held. And here we have an extremely
prudent admonition, directing us to expect the per
fection of the sciences from succession, and not from
the swiftness and abilities of any single person ; for he
who is fleetest and strongest in the course may perhaps
be less fit to keep his torch alight, since there is danger
of its going out from too rapid as well as from too slow
a motion. But this kind of contest, with the torch,
se'ems to have been long dropped and neglected ; the
sciences appearing to have flourished principally in
their first authors, as Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy,
etc.; whilst their successors have done very little, or
scarce made any attempts. But it were highly to be
wished that these games might be renewed, to the
honor of Prometheus, or human nature, and that they
might excite contest, emulation, and laudable endeavors,
and the design meet with such success as not to hang
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tottering, tremulous, and hazarded, upon the torch'of
any single person. Mankind, therefore, should be
admonished to rouse themselves, and try and exert
their own strength and chance, and not place all their
dependence upon a few men, whose abilities and
capacities, perhaps, are not greater than their own.
These are the particulars which appear to us shadowed
out by this trite and vulgar fable, though without
denying that there may be contained in it several
intimations that have a surprising correspondence with
the Christian mysteries. In particular, the voyage of
Hercules, made in a pitcher, to release Prometheus,
bears an allusion to the word of God, coming in the
frail vessel of the flesh to redeem mankind. But we
indulge ourselves no such liberties as these, for fear of
using strange fire at the altar of the Lord.
XXVII.—ICARUS and SCYLLA and CHARYBDIS :
OR THE MIDDLE WAY.
EXPLAINED OF MEDIOCRITY IN NATURAL AND MORAL
PHILOSOPHY.
Mediocrity, or the holding a middle course, has been
highly extolled in morality, but little in matters of
science, though no less useful and proper here ; whilst
in politics it is held suspected, and ought to be employed
with judgment. The ancients described mediocrity
in manners by the course prescribed to Icarus ; and in
matters of the understanding by the steering betwixt
Scylla and Charybdis, on account of the great difficulty
and danger in passing those straits.
Icarus, being to fly across the sea, was ordered by
his father neither to soar too high nor fly too low, for,
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73
as his wings were fastened together with wax, there
was danger of its melting by the sun’s heat in too high
a flight, and of its becoming less tenacious by the
moisture if he kept too near the vapor of the sea. But
he, with a juvenile confidence, soared aloft, and fell
down headlong.
Explanation.—The fable is vulgar, and easily inter
preted ; for the path of virtue lies straight between
excess on the one side, and defect on the other. And
no wander that excess should prove the bane of Icarus,
exulting in juvenile strength and vigor ; for excess is
the natural vice of youth, as defect is that of old age;
and if a man must perish by either, Icarus chose the
better of the two ; for all defects are justly esteemed
more depraved than excesses. There is some mag
nanimity in excess, that, like a bird, claims kindred
with the heavens; but defect is a reptile, that basely
crawls upon the earth. It was excellently said by
Heraclitus, “ A dry light makes the best soul ” ; for if
the soul contracts moisture from the earth, it perfectly
degenerates and sinks. On the other hand, moderation
must be observed, to prevent this fine light from
burning, by its too great subtilty and dryness. But
these observations are common.
In matters of the understanding, it requires great
skill and a particular felicity to steer clear of Scylla
and Charybdis. If the ship strikes upon Scylla, it is
dashed in pieces against the rocks ; if upon Charybdis,
it is swallowed outright. This allegory is pregnant
with matter ; but we shall only observe that the force
of it lies here, that a mean be observed in every
doctrine and science, and in the rules and axioms
thereof, between the rocks of distinctions and the
whirlpools of universalities ; for these two are the
bane and shipwreck of fine geniuses and arts.
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XXVIII.—SPHINX : OR SCIENCE.
EXPLAINED OF THE SCIENCES.
They relate that Sphinx was a monster, variously
formed, having the face and voice of a virgin, the
wings of a bird, and the talons of a griffin. She
resided on the top of a mountain, near the city Thebes,
and also beset the highways; Her manner was to lie
in ambush and seize the travellers, and having them in
her power, to propose to them certain dark and per
plexed riddles, which it was thought she received from
the Muses, and if her wretched captives could not solve
and interpret these riddles, she with great cruelty fell
upon them, in their hesitation and confusion, and tore
them to pieces. This plague having reigned a long
time, the Thebans at length offered their kingdom to
the man who could interpret her riddles, there being
no other way to subdue her. (Edipus, a penetrating
and prudent man, though lame in his feet, excited by
so great a reward, accepted the condition, and with a
good assurance of mind, cheerfully presented himself
before the monster, who directly asked him, “ What
creature that was, which being born four-footed, after
wards became two-footed, then tbree-footed, and lastly
four-footed again ?” CEdipus, with presence of mind,
replied it was man, who, upon his first, birth and infant
state, crawled upon all fours in endeavoring to walk ;
but not long after went upright upon his two natural
feet; again, in old age walked three-footed, with a
stick ; and at last, growing decrepit, lay four-footed
confined to his bed ; and having by this exact solution
obtained the victory, he slew the monster, and, laying
the carcass upon an ass, led her away in triumph ; and
upon this he was, according to the agreement, made
king of Thebes.
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Explanation.—This is an elegant, instructive fable,
and seems invented to represent science, especially as
joined with practice. For science may, without
absurdity, be called a monster, being strangely gazed
at and admired by the ignorant and unskilful. Her
figure and form is various, by reason of the vast variety
of subjects that science considers; her voice and
countenance are represented female, by reason of her
gay appearance and volubility of speech ; wings are
added, because the sciences and their inventions run
and fly about in a moment, for knowledge, like light
communicated from one torch to another, is presently
caught and copiously diffused; sharp and hooked
talons are elegantly attributed to her, because the
axioms and arguments of science enter the mind, lay
hold of it, fix it down, and keep it from moving or
slipping away. This the sacred philosopher observed,
when he said, “ The words of the wise are like goads
or nails driven far in.” Again, all science seems
placed on high, as it were on the tops of mountains
that are hard to climb ; for science is justly imagined
a sublime and lofty thing, looking down upon igno
rance from an eminence, and at the same time taking
an extensive view on all sides, as is usual on the tops
of mouniains. Science is said to beset the highways,
because through all the journey and peregrination of
human life there is matter and occasion offered of
contemplation.
Sphinx is said to propose various difficult questions
and riddles to men, which she received from the
Muses ; and these questions, so long as they remain
with the Muses, may very well be unaccompanied with
severity, for while there is no other end of contem
plation and inquiry but that of knowledge alone, the
understanding is not opposed, or driven to straits and
difficulties, but expatiates and ranges at large, and
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even receives a degree of pleasure from doubt and
variety; but after the Muses have given over their
riddles to Sphinx, that is, to practice, which urges and
impels to action, choice, and determination, then it is
that they become torturing, severe, and trying, and,
unless solved and interpreted, strangely perplex and
harass the human mind, rend it every way, and
perfectly tear it to pieces. All the riddles of Sphinx,
therefore, have two conditions annexed, namely, dila
ceration to those who do not solve them, and empire to
those that do. For he who understands the thing
proposed obtains his end, and every artificer rules over
his work.
Sphinx has no more than two kinds of riddles, one
relating to the nature of things, the other to the nature
of man ; and correspondent to these, the prizes of the
solution are two kinds of empire,—the empire over
nature, and the empire over man. For the true and
ultimate end of natural philosophy is dominion over
natural things, natural bodies, remedies, machines, and
numberless other particulars, though the schools, con
tended with what spontaneously offers, and swollen
with their own discourses, neglect, and in a manner
despise, both things and works.
But the riddle proposed to CEdipus, the solution
whereof acquired him the Theban kingdon, regarded
the nature of man ; for he who has throughly looked
into and examined human nature, may in a manner
command his own fortune, and seems born to acquire
dominion and rule. Accordingly, Virgil properly
makes the arts of government to be the arts of the
Romans. It was, therefore extremely apposite in
Augustus Caesar to use the image of Sphinx in his
signet, whether this happened by accident or by design ;
for he of all men was deeply versed in politics, and
through the course of his life very happily solved
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77
abundance of new riddles with regard to the nature of
man ; and unless he had done this with great dexterity
and ready address, he would frequently have been
involved in imminent danger, if not destruction.
It is with the utmost elegance added in the fable,
that when Sphinx was conquered, her carcass was laid
upon an ass; for there is nothing so subtile and
abstruse, but after being once made plain, intelligible,
and common, it may be received by the slowest
capacity.
We must not omit that Sphinx was conquered by a
lame man, and impotent in his feet; for men usually
make too much haste to the solution of Sphinx’s riddles;
whence it happens, that she prevailing, their minds are
rather racked and torn by disputes, than invested with
command by works and effects.
XXIX.—PROSERPINE : OR SPIRIT.
EXPLAINED OF THE SPIRIT INCLUDED IN NATURAL BODIES.
They tell us, Pluto having, upon that memorable
division of empire among the gods, received the
infernal regions for his share, despaired of winning
any one of the goddesses in marriage by an obsequious
courtship, and therefore through necessity resolved
upon a rape. Having watched his opportunity, he sud
denly seized upon Proserpine, a most beautiful virgin,
the daughter of Ceres, as she was gathering narcissus
flowers in the meads of Sicily, and hurrying her to his
chariot, carried her with him to the subterraneal
regions, where she was treated with the highest rever
ence, and styled the Lady of Dis. But Ceres missing
her only daughter, whom she extremely loved, grew
pensive and anxious beyond measure, and taking a
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lighted torch in her hand, wandered the world over in
quest of her daughter,—but all to no purpose, till, sus
pecting she might be carried to the infernal regions, she,
with great lamentation and abundance of tears, impor
tuned Jupiter to restore her ; and with much ado pre
vailed so far as to recover and bring her away, if she had
tasted nothing there. This proved a hard condition
upon the mother, for Proserpine was found to have
eaten three kernels of a pomegranate. Ceres, however,
desisted not, but fell to her entreaties and lamentations
afresh, insomuch that at last it was indulged her that
Proserpine should divide the year betwixt her husband
and her mother, and live six months with the one and
as many with the other. After this, Theseus, and
Perithous, with uncommon audacity, attempted to
force Proserpine away from Pluto’s bed, but happening*
to grow tired in their journey, and resting themselves
upon a stone in the realms below, they could never
rise from it again, but remain sitting there for ever.
Proserpine, therefore, still continued queen of the
lower regions, in honor of whom there was also added
this grand privilege, that though it had never been per
mitted any one to return after having once descended
thither, a particular exception was made, that he who
brought a golden bough as a present to Proserpine,
might on that condition descend and return. This
was an only bough that grew in a large dark grove, not
from a tree of its own, but like the mistletoe, from
another, and when plucked away a fresh one always
shot out in its stead.
Explanation. —This fable seems to regard natural
philosophy, and searches deep into that rich and
fruitful virtue and supply in subterraneous bodies,
from whence all the things upon the earth’s surface
spring, and into which they again relapse and return.
By Proserpine the ancients denoted that ethereal spirit
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79
shut up and detained within the earth, here represented
by Pluto,—the spirit being separated from the superior
globe, according to the expression of the poet. This
spirit is conceived as ravished, or snatched up by the
earth, because it can no way be detained, when it has
time and opportunity to fly off, but is only wrought
together and fixed by sudden intermixture and commi
nution, in the same manner as if one should endeavor to
mix air with water, which cannot otherwise be done
than by a quick and rapid agitation, that joins them
together in froth whilst the air is thus caught up by
the water. And it is elegantly added, that Proserpine
was ravished whilst she gathered narcissus flowers,
which have their name from numbedness or stupefac
tion ; for the spirit we speak of is in the fittest dis
position to be embraced by terrestrial matter when it
begins to coagulate, or grow torpid as it were.
It is an honor justly attributed to Proserpine, and
not to any other wife of the gods, that of being the
lady or mistress of her husband, because this spirit
performs all its operations in the subterraneal regions,
whilst Pluto, or the earth, remains stupid, or as it were
ignorant of them.
The aether, or the efficacy of the heavenly bodies,
denoted by Ceres, endeavors with infinite diligence to
force out this spirit, and restore it to its pristine state.
And by the torch in the hand of Ceres, or the aether, is
doubtless meant the sun, which disperses light over
the whole globe of the earth, and if the thing were
possible, must have the greatest share in recovering
Proserpine, or reinstating the subterraneal spirit. Yet
Proserpine still continues and dwells below, after the
manner excellently described in the condition betwixt
Jupiter and Ceres. For first, it is certain that there
are two ways of detaining the spirit, in solid and
terrestrial matter,—the one by condensation or obstruc
�80
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
tion, which is mere violence and imprisonment ; the
other by administering a proper aliment, which is
spontaneous and free. For after the included spirit
begins to feed and nourish itself, it is not in a hurry
to fly off, but remains, as it were, fixed in its own
earth. And this is the moral of Proserpine’s tasting
the pomegranate ; and were it not for this, she must
long ago have been carried up by Geres, who with her
torch wandered the world over, and so the earth have
been left without its spirit. For though the spirit in
metals and minerals may perhaps be, after a particular
manner, wrought in by the solidity of the mass, yet
the spirit of vegetables and animals has open passages
to escape at, unless it be willingly detained, in the way
of sipping and tasting them.
The second article of agreement, that of Proserpine’s
remaining six months with her mother and six with
her husband, is an elegant description of the division
of the year ; for the spirit diffused through the earth
lives above-ground in the vegetable during the summer
months, but in the winter returns under-ground again.
The attempts of Theseus and Perithous to bring
Proserpine away, denotes that the more subtile spirits,
which descend in many bodies to the earth, may
frequently be unable to drink in, unite with themselves,
and carry off the subterraneous spirit but on the con
trary be coagulated by it, and rise no more, so as to
increase the inhabitants and add to the dominion of
Proserpine.
The alchemists will be apt to fall in with our inter
pretation of the golden bough, whether we will or no,
because they promise golden mountains, and the resto
ration of natural bodies from their stone, as from the
gates of Pluto ; but we are well assured that their
theory has no just foundation, and suspect they have
no very encouraging or practical proofs of its sound
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
81
ness. Leaving, therefore, their conceits to themselves,
we shall freely declare our own sentiments upon this
last part of the fable. We are certain, from numerous
figures and expressions of the ancients, that they
judged the conservation, and in some degree the reno
vation, of natural bodies to be no desperate or impossible
thing, but rather abstruse and out of the common road
than wholly impracticable. And this seems to be their
opinion in the present case, as they have placed this
bough among an infinite number of shrubs, in a.
spacious and thick wood. They supposed it of gold,
because gold is the emblem of duration. They feigned
it adventitious, not native, because such an effect is to
be expected from art, and not from any medicine or
any simple or mere natural way of working.
XXX.—METIS : OR COUNSEL.
EXPLAINED OF PRINCES AND THEIR COUNCIL.
The ancient poets relate that Jupiter took Metis to
wife, whose name plainly denotes counsel, and that he,
perceiving she was pregnant by him, would by no
means wait the time of her delivery, but directly
devoured her; whence himself also became pregnant,
and was delivered in a wonderful manner ; for he from
his head or brain brought forth Pallas armed.
Explanation.—This fable, which in its literal sens©
appears monstrously absurd, seems to contain a stat©
secret, and shows with what art kings usually
carry themselves towards their council, in order
to preserve their own authority and majesty not
only inviolate, but so as to have it magnified and
heightened among the people. For kings commonly
F
�82
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
link themselves, as it were, in a nuptial bond to their
council, and deliberate and communicate with them
after a prudent and laudable custom upon matters of
the greatest importance, at the same time justly con
ceiving this no diminution of their majesty ; but when
the matter once ripens to a decree or order, which is a
kind of birth, the king then suffers the council to go
on no further, lest the act should seem to depend
upon their pleasure. Now, therefore, the king usually
assumes to himself whatever was wrought, elaborated,
or formed, as it were, in the womb of the council
(unless it be a matter of an invidious nature, which he
is sure to put from him), so that the decree and the
execution shall seem to flow from himself. And as
this decree or execution proceeds with prudence and
power, so as to imply necessity, it is elegantly wrapt
up under the figure of Pallas armed.
Nor are kings content to have this seem the effect of
their own authority, free will, and uncontrollable
choice, unless they also take the whole honor to themselves, and make the people imagine that all good and
wholesome decrees proceed entirely from their own
head, that is, their own sole prudence and judgment.
.—THE SIRENS : OR PLEASURES.
EXPLAINED OF MEN’S PASSION FOR PLEASURES.
Introduction.—The fable of the Sirens is, in a vulgar
sense, justly enough explained of the pernicious incen
tives to pleasure ; but the ancient mythology seems to
us like a vintage ill-pressed and trod; for though
something has been drawn from it, yet all the more
excellent parts remain behind in the grapes that are
untouched.
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
83
Fable.—The Sirens are said to be the daughters of
Achelous and Terpsichore, one of the Muses. In their
early days they had wings, but lost them upon being
conquered by the Muses, with whom they rashly con
tended ; and with the feathers of these wings the
Muses made themselves crowns, so that from this time
the Muses wore wings on their heads, excepting only
the mother to the Sirens.
These Sirens resided in certain pleasant islands, and
when, from their watch-tower, they saw any ship
approaching, they first detained the sailors by their
music, then, enticing them to shore, destroyed them.
Their singing was not of one and the same kind, but
they adapted their tunes exactly to the nature of each
person, in order to captivate and secure him. And so
destructive had they been, that these islands of the
Sirens appeared, to a very great distance, white with
the bones of their unburied captives.
Two different remedies were invented to protect
persons against them, the one by Ulysses, the other by
Orpheus. Ulysses commanded his associates to stop
their ears close with wax; and he, determining to
make the trial, and yet avoid the danger, ordered him
self to be tied fast to a mast of the ship, giving strict
charge not to be unbound, even though himself should
entreat it; but Orpheus, without any binding at all,
escaped the danger, by loudly chanting to his harp the
praises of the gods, whereby he drowned the voices of
the Sirens.
Explanation.—This fable is of the moral kind, and
appears no less elegant than easy to interpret. For
pleasures proceed from plenty and affluence, attended
with activity or exultation of the mind. Anciently
their first incentives were quick, and seized upon men
as if they had been winged, but learning and philosophy
afterwards prevailing, had at least the power to lay the
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
mind under some restraint, and make it consider the
issue of things, and thus deprived pleasures of their
wings.
This conquest redounded greatly to the honor and
ornament of the Muses ; for after it appeared, by the
example of a few, that philosophy could introduce a
contempt of pleasures, it immediately seemed to be a
sublime thing that could raise and elevate the soul,
fixed in a manner down to the earth, and thus render
men’s thoughts, which reside in the head, winged as it
were, or sublime.
Only the mother of the Sirens was not thus plumed
on the head, which doubtless denotes superficial learn
ing, invented and used for delight and levity ; an
eminent example whereof we have in Petronius, who,
after receiving sentence of death, still continued his
gay frothy humor, and, as Tacitus observes, used his
learning to solace or divert himself, and instead of such
discourses as give firmness and constancy of mind, read
nothing but loose poems and verses. Such learning
as this seems to pluck the crowns again from the
Muses’ heads, and restore them to the Sirens.
The Sirens are said to inhabit certain islands, because
pleasures generally seek retirement, and often shun
society. And for their songs, with the manifold artifice
and destructiveness thereof, this is too obvious and
common to need explanation. But that particular of
the bones stretching like white cliffs along the shores,
and appearing afar off, contains a more subtile allegory,
and denotes that the examples of others’ calamity and
misfortunes, though ever so manifest and apparent,
have yet but little force to deter the corrupt nature of
of man from pleasures.
This allegory of the remedies against the Sirens is
not difficult, but very wise and noble : it proposes, in
effect, three remedies, as well against subtile as violent
�PAGAN MYTHOLOGY.
85
'■mischiefs, two drawn from philosophy and one from
^religion.
The first means of escaping is to resist the earliest
temptation in the beginning, and diligently avoid and
cut off all occasions that may solicit or sway the mind ;
. and this is well represented by shutting up the ears, a
kind of remedy to be necessarily used with mean and
vulgar minds, such as the retinue of Ulysses.
But noble spirits may converse, even in the midst of
pleasures, if the mind be well guarded with constancy
and resolution. And thus some delight to make a
severe trial of their own virtue, and thoroughly acquaint
themselves with the folly and madness of pleasures,
without complying or being wholly given up to them ;
which is what Solomon professes of himself when he
■closes the account of all the numerous pleasures he
gave a loose to, with this expression—“ But wisdom
. still continued with me.” Such heroes in virtue may,
therefore, remain unmoved by the greatest incentives
to pleasure, and stop themselves on the very precipice
of danger ; if, according to the example of Ulysses,
they turn a deaf ear to pernicious counsel, and the
flatteries of their friends and companions, which have
the greatest power to shake and unsettle the mind.
But the most excellent remedy, in every temptation,
is that of Orpheus, who, by loudly chanting and
resounding the praises of the gods, confounded the
voices, and kept himself from hearing the music of
the Sirens; for divine contemplations exceed the
pleasures of sense, not only in power but also in
;■ sweetness.
���■
��FREETHOUGHT PUBLICATIONS.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM EXAMINED
By Jeremy Bentham. With a Biographical Preface by
J. M. Wheeler -------FREE WILL AND NECESSITY. By Anthony Collins
Reprinted from 1715 ed., with Preface and Annotations by
G. W. Foote, and a Biographical Introduction by J. M.
Wheeler.
Superior edition, on superfine paper, bound in cloth
TSE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. By Ludwig Feuerbach
IS SOCIALISM SOUND? Four Nights’Public Debate between
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.
.
Superior edition, in cloth ------CHRISTIANITY AND SECULARISM. Four Nights’ Public
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LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. By David Hume A REFUTATION OF DEISM. In a Dialogue. By Shelley.
With an Introduction by G. W. Foote R. FORDER, 28 Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
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Victorian Blogging
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Pagan mythology, or the wisdom of the ancients
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Bacon, Francis [1561-1626]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 85 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover: 'M. Steinberger,4,5, & 6 Great St Helens, London, E.C'. Printed and published by G.W. Foote. Publisher's list on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Mythology
Paganism
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Mythology
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Paganism
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Myth
AND
MIRACLE
A Nev lecture
BY
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1886.
�INTRODUCTION.
The following is reprinted from the
It is a report, evidently not in full, but probably
containing the best and freshest portions, of a lecture
delivered in the Boston Theatre on Sunday evening,
October 11, by Colonel R. G. Ingersoll, the great
American orator, whose Freethought discourses are
more popular in the United States than the addresses
of any Christian speaker, not even excepting Ward
Beecher.
The audience was very enthusiastic,
and crowded the theatre to the very doors.
�Myth and Miracle.
Ladies and Gentlemen :—What, after all, is the
object of life j what is the highest possible aim ? The
highest aim is to accomplish the only good. Happi
ness is the only good of which man by any possibility
can conceive. The object of life is to increase human
joy, and the means, intellectual and physical develop
ment. The question, then, is, Shall we rely upon
superstition or upon growth ? Is intellectual develop
ment the highway of progress, or must we depend on
the pit of credulity ? Must we rely on belief or
credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous investi
gation, thought, and intellectual development f For
thousands of years men have been talking about
religious freedom. I am now contending for the
freedom of religion, not religious freedom—for the
freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few
years ago our poor ancestors tried to account foi
what they saw. Noticing the running river, the
shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit
in the river, a spirit in the star, and another in the
flower. Something makes this river run, something
makes this star shine, something paints the bosom of
�4
that flower. These were all spirits. That was the
first religion of mankind—fetishism—and in every
thing that lived, everything that produced an effect
upon them, they said, “This is a spirit that lives
within.'” That is called the lowest phase of religious
thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of religi
ous thought. One by one these little spirits died.
One by one non-entities took their places, and
last of all
WE HAVE ONE INFINITE FETISIl
that takes the place of all others. Now, what makes
the river run ? We say the attraction of gravitation,
and we know no more about that than we do about
this fetish. What makes the tree grow ? The
principle of life—vital forces. These are simply
phrases; simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows
what makes the river run, what makes the trees
grow, why the flowers burst and bloom—nobody
knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody
ever 'will know.
There are two horizons that have never been passed
by man—origin and destiny. All human knowledge
is confined to the diameter of that circle. All
religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circum
ference of the absolutely known. (Applause.) What
next ? The next thing that came in the world—the
next man—was the myth-maker. He gave to these
little spirits human passions; he clothed ghosts in
flesh; he warmed that flesh with blood ; and in that
blood he put desire—motive. And the myths were
born, and were only produced through the fact of
the impressions that Nature makes upon the brain of
�5
man. They were every one a natural production,
and let me say here to-night that what men call
monstrosities are only natural productions. Every
religion has grown just as naturally as the grass;
every one, as I said before, and it cannot be said too
often, has been naturally produced. All the Christs,
all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies,
all the mingling of the beastly and human, were
produced by the impressions of Nature upon the
brain of man—by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn,
the golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the
change of seasons, the lightning, the storm, the
beautiful bow—all these produced within the brain of
man all myths, and they are all natural productions.
(Applause.)
There have been certain myths universal among
men. Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal
—the Golden Age, which is absolutely the same thing.
And what was the Golden Age born of ? Any old
man in Boston will tell you that fifty years ago all
people were honest. (Applause). Fifty years ago
all people were sociable—there was no stuck-up aris
tocracy then. Neighbors were neighbors. Mer
chants gave full weight. Everything was full length;
everything was a yard wide and all wool. (Applause).
Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it
business. (Applause). Go back fifty years, andfyoh.
will find an old man who will tell you that there
was
A TIME WHEN ALL WERE HONEST.
Go back another fifty years, and you will find
another sage who will tell you the same story;
�6
Every man looks back to his youth—to the golden
age ; and what is true of the individual is true of the
whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood,
an d, finally, will have an old age. The Garden of
Eden is not back of us. There are more honest men,
good women, and obedient children in the world to-day
than ever before. The myth of the Elysian fields is uni
versally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds
in the West turned to amethyst, sapphire andpurple?
the poor savage thought it a vision of another land
—a land without care or grief; a world of perpetual
joy. This myth was born of the setting of the
sun.
A universal myth all nations have believed in
floods.
Savages found everywhere evidences of
the sea having been above the earth, and saw
in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It
had left its’ cards on the tops of mountains. The
savage knew nothing of the slow rising and sinking of
the crust of the earth. He did not dream of it. We
now know that where the mountains lift their granite
foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and
that where the waves dash into white caps of joy the
mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the
land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is, the
land will be. The Hindoos believe in the Flood mythTheir hero, who lived almost entirely on water, went
to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, taking
up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish, that
prayed him to save it from the monster of the river,
and it would save him in turn from his enemies. He
did so, and put it into different receptacles until it
�7
grew so large that he let it loose in the sea ; then it
was large enough to take care of itself. The fish told
him that there was going to be an immense flood, and
told him to gather all kinds of seed and take two of
each kind of animal of use to man, and he would come
along with an ark and take them all in. He told him
to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark
along tied to its horns, and took them in and carried
them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the
ark to a tree. (Applause.) When the waters receded,
they came out and followed them down until they
reached the plain. There were the same number—
eight—in this ark as there were with Noah.
I find that the myth of the Virgin Mother is uni-'
versal.
THE VIRGIN MOTHER IS THE EARTH.
1 find also in all countries the idea of a Trinity.
In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris and Horus. This idea
prevailed in Central America among the Aztecs. We
find the myth of the Judgment almost universal. I
imagine men have seen so much injustice here that
they naturally expect that there must be some day of
final judgment somewhere.
(Applause). Nearly
every Theist is driven to the necessity of having
another world in which his God may correct thb mis
takes he has made in this. We find on the walls of
Egyptian temples pictures of the judgment—the
righteous all go on the right hand, and those un
worthy on the left.
The myth of the Sun-god was universal. Agni
was the sun-god of the Hindoos. He was called
�8
the most generous of all gods, yet he ate his
own father and mother. Baldur was another sun
god ; he was a sun-myth. Hercules was a sun
god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was a sun-g’od,
and was swallowed by a fish. • So was Hercules, and
a wonderful thing is, that they were swallowed in
about the same place, near Joppa. Where did the
big fish go ? When the sun went down under the
earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish,
which was said to swallow it, and carry it safely
through the under-world. The sun thus came to be
represented as the body of a woman with the tail of
a fish, and so the mermaid was born. (Applause).
Another strange thing is that all the sun-gods were
born near Christmas.
The myth of Red Riding Hood was known am ong
the Aztecs. The myth of the Eucharist came from
the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes
made by the' product of the field were eaten, it
was of the body of Ceres, and when the wine
was drunk, it was the blood of Bacchus. From this
idea the eucharist was born. There is nothing original
in Christianity.
Holy water! Another myth. The Hindoos
imagined that the water had its source in the
throne of God. The Egyptians thought the Nile
sacred, Greece was settled by Egyptian colonies, and
they carried with them the water of the Nile; and
when anyone died the water was sprinkled on him.
Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but
Greece conquered Rome intellectually.
(Loud
Applause).
�9
This is the myth of holy water, and with it grew
up
THE IDEA OF BAPTISM.
and I presume that that is as old as water and dirt.
(Applause.)
The cross is another universal symbol. There
was once an ancient people in Italy before the
Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the
world, and history does not even know the name of
that nation. We find where they buried the ashes of
their dead, and we find chiselled, hundred of years
• before Christ, the cross, a symbol of hope of another
life. We find the cross in Egypt, in the cylinders
from Babylon, and, more than that, we find them in
Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we
find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our
cross was built in the Middle Ages.
When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son,
to the Garden of Eden. He told him he would have
no trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to
follow the tracks made by his mother and father when
they left it. (Applause.) He wanted a little balsam
from the tree of life that he might not die. Seth
found there a cherub with flaming sword, who would
not let him pass the door. He moved his wing so
that he could see in, and he saw the tree of life, with
its roots running down to hell, and among them Cain,
the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, and
told him to put them in his father’s mouth when he
was buried, and to watch the effect. The result was
that three trees grew up—one pine, one cedar, and
�10
•one cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees
to put in the temple, but it grew through the roof and
he threw it into the pool of Bethesda. When the
soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ
they took this tree and made a cross of it. Helena,
the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem to
find this cross. She found the two crosses also
that the thieves were crucified on. They could
not tell which was which, so they called a sick
woman, who touched them, and when she touched
the right one she was immediately made whole.
Such is myth and fable. The history of one reli
gion is substantially the history of all religions. In
embryo man lives all lives. The man of genius knows
within himself the history of the human racej he
knows the history of all religions.
The man of
imagination, of genius, having seen a leaf and a
drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers
and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall
and foam, the mists rise and the clouds form and
float. To really know one fact is to know its kindred
and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking at a coat
of mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions
that produced it, and what it, in its turn, produced.
He saw the castle, the moat, the drawbridge, the lady
in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over the
plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer,
the trampled serfs and all the glory and the grief of
feudal life.
The man of imagination has lived the life of all
people, of all races. He has been a citizen of Athens
in the days of Pericles; has listened to the eager elo
�11
quence of the great orator, and has sat upon the
cliff, and with the tragic poet heard “ the multitu
dinous laughter of the sea?" He has seen Socrates
thrust the spear of question through the shield and
heart of falsehood—was present when the great man
drank hemlock and met the night of death tranquil
as a star meets morning. He has followed the peri
patetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the
sophists. He has watched Phidias, as he chiselled
shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. He has
lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous.
He knows the very thought that wrought the form
and features of the Sphinx. He has heard great
Memnon’s morning song—has lain him down with
the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the
expectation of another life, mingled with cold and
suffocating doubts—the children born of long delay.
He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen
great Caesar with his legions in the field,
has stood with vast and motley throngs and
watched the triumphs given to victorious
men, followed by uncrowned kings, the cap
tured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war.
He has heard the shout that shook the Coli
seum s roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator’s
hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom
gushed the stream of wasted life. Ho has lived the
life of savage men—has trod the forest’s silent depths,
and in the desperate game of life or death has matched
his thought against the instinct of the beast. He
has sat beneath the bo-tree’s contemplative shade,
rapt in Buddha’s mighty thought, and he has dreamed
�12
all dreams that Light, the alchemist, hath wrought
from dust and dew and stored within the slumbrous
poppjds subtle blood. He has knelt with awe and
dread at every prayer ; has felt the consolation and
the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils; has
mocked and worshipped all the gods; enjoyed all
heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has
lived all lives, and through his blood and brain have
crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and
his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed naked to the
wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The
imagination has a stage within the brain, whereon he
sets all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter
and the night of tears, and where his players body
forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the care
less shallows and the tragic deeps of human life.
(Tremendous applause.)
Through with the myth-makers, we now come to
the wonder-worker. There is this between the miracle
and the myth—a myth is an idealism of a fact, and a
miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is some
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MYTH AND A MIRACLE.
There is the difference that there is between fiction
and falsehood, and poetry and perjury. (Applause).
Miracles are probable only in the far past or the very
remote future. The present is the property of the
natural. (Applause). You say to a man,“ The dead
were raised 4,000 years ago.” He says,(C Well, thatfs
reasonable.” You say to him, “ In 4,000,000 years
we shall all be raised.” He says, “ That is what I
believe.” Say to him, “ A man was raised from the
�13
dead this morning,^ and he will say, “ What are you
giving us ?” (Laughter). Miracles never convinced
at the time they were said to have been performed.
[The speaker here spoke of several instances related
in the Bible sustaining this statement.] He con
tinued : John the Baptist was the forerunner of
Christ. He was cast into prison.
When Christ
heard of it he “ departed from that country/'’ After
wards he returned, and heard that John had been be
headed, and he again departed from that country.
There is no possible relation between the miraculous
and the moral. The miracles of the Middle Ages
are the children of superstition. In the Middle Ages
men told every thing but the truth, and believed every
thing but the facts. The Middle Ages—a trinity of
ignorance, mendacity and insanity! There is one thing
about humanity. You see the faults of others but not
your own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing
before an idol, and thinks it absurd. Why does he
not get him a plaster-of-paris Virgin, and some beads
and holy water? Why does the Protestant shut his eyes
when he prays ? The idea is a souvenir of sun-worship,
which is the most natural worship in the world.
Religious dogmas have become absurd, The doctrine
of eternal torment to-day has become absurd—(ap
plause)—low, grovelling, ignorant, barbaric, savage,
devilish—(great applause)—and no gentleman would
preach it. (Applause).
Referring to the demonstrations of science, he
said :
Science, thou art the great magician ! Thou alone
performest the true miracles. Thou alone workest
�14
the real wanders. Fire is thy servant, lightning thy
messenger. The waves obey thee, and thou knowest
the circuits of the wind. Thou art the great philan
thropist. Thou hast freed the slave and civilised the
master. Thou hast taught man to chain, not his
fellow-man, but the forces of Nature—forces that have
no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill
and eat—forces that never know fatigue, that shed
no tears—forces that have no liearts to break. Thou
gavest man the plough, the reaper, and the loom—
thou hast fed and clothed the world. Thou art the
great physician. Thy touch hath given sight. Thou
hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and
in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of
health. “ Thou hast given thy beloved sleep ”—a
sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing
nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence
of man—preserver of life and love. Thou art the
teacher of every virtue, the enemy of every vice.
Thou hast discovered the true basis of morals—the
origin and office of conscience—and hast revealed
the nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast
taught that love is justice in its highest form,
and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, em
braces with loving arms the human race. Thou
hast
SLAIN THE MONSTERS OF THE PAST-
Thou hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou
hast read the records of the rocks, written by wind
and wave, by frost and flame—records that even
priestcraft cannot change—and in thy wondrous scales
thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars. Thou
�15
art the founder of the only true religion. Thou art the
very Christ, the only Savior of mankind! (Applause.)
Continuing, he said :—Theology has always been
in the way of the advance of the human race. There
is this difference between science and theology,__
science is modest and merciful, while theology is ar
rogant and cruel. The hope of science is the perfec
tion of the human race. The hope of theology is the
salvation of a few and the damnation of almost every
body. As I told you in the first place, I believe
in the religion of freedom. 0 Liberty, thou
art the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only
deity that hates the bended knee. (Applause.) In
thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless
dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy
worshippers stand erect. They do not bow or cringeor crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth. The
dust hath never borne the impress of their lips. Upon
thy sacred altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes,
nor men their rights. Thou takest naught from man
except the things that good men hate -/the whip, thechain, the dungeon-key. Thou hast no kings, no
popes, no priests to stand between their fellow-men
and thee. Thou hast no monks, no nuns, who, in thename of duty, murder joy. Thou carest not for forms
nor mumbled prayers. At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy
does not bow, fear does not crouch, virtue does not
tremble, superstition'’s feeble tapers do not burn, but
Reason holds aloft her inextinguishable torch, while
on the ever-broadening- brow of science falls the
ever-coming morning of the ever-better day. (G-reai
Applause.)
�INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
By G. W. FOOTE.
Being a faithful history of the deaths of the most eminent
Freethinkers of all ages, and a triumphant answer to the
lies and misrepresentations of Christian apologists. No pains
have been spared to give the most precise particulars from
original sources, and this work will be a standard one on the
subject. Every Freethinker should have a copy, and keep it
constantly by him.
List of Freethinkers dealt with—
i Frederick the Great Mirabeau
Lord Amberley
Lord Bolingbroke i Gambetta
Robert Owen
Isaac Gendre
i Thomas Paine
Giordano Bruno
Henry Thos. Buckle Gibbon
Shelley
Lord Byron
Goethe
Spinoza
Richard Carlile
Henry Hetherington j D. F. Strauss
John Toland
Professor Clifford
Hobbes
Van ini
' Austin Holyoake
Anthony Collins
Volney
I Victor Hugo
Condorcet
Voltaire
, Hume
Robert Cooper
James Watson
Danton
Littre
Harriet Martineau John Watts
Diderot
, Thomas Woolston
, J. S. Mill
George Eliot
“ Special thanks are clue to Mr. G. W. Foote for his new pamphlet.
The sketches of the various Freethinkers are very readable, and a
double end will be achieved in refuting pious slanderers and reviving
the memories of our dead.’-—National Reformer.
“Mr. Foote's little manual cannot fail to be of great service in re
futing the ancient and silly death-bed argument. . . . We should be
gratified to hear that the little book meets with an extensive sale.”—
Secular Review.
“Mr. Foote is in his element in Infidel Death-Beds, and his care
fully-stated facts about the last hours of well-known unbelievers
ought to be in the hands of every Freethinker.”—- Our Corner.
Price Sixpence.
Superior Edition, on superfine paper, bound in cloth. One Shilling.
Letters B G. Jesus Christ.
to W. FOOTE.
y
SOMETHING
STARTLING
Price
AND UNIQUE.
Fourpence.
Printed and Published by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street, E.C
�
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Myth and miracle : a new lecture
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
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Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Reprinted from the Boston Investigator. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. No. 53a in Stein checklist.
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Progressive Publishing Co.
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1886
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N376
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Mythology
Miracles
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Freedom of Religion
Miracles
Mythology
NSS
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1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
501
necessity. On the same basis, we must allow at least a miocene
emigration to the platyrhine monkey which first came to
America with his thirty-six teeth and his prehensile tail, while
we must be prepared to find the origin of the monkey tribe it
self disappear in the enormous gap which divides the eocene
from the cretaceous age. In all this there would be nothing
inconsistent with our present vague geological knowledge ; for,
although no pliocene man has yet been identified, few geolo
gists would care to deny the possibility of his existence, while
an eocene monkey not unlike an American type is known to
have lived in Switzerland. All that we have assumed is the
truth of Lamarck’s hypothesis, a purely scientific matter, about
which we shall certainly not venture to express an opinion.
Henry Brooks Adams.
----------
.
CT
Art. V. — Epic Philosophy.
Homer begins the Iliad with “ Sing, Goddess,” as if not
himself, but a divine being, were the true poet. Shall we
suppose that his invocation is merely formal ? that it is con
sciously addressed to Nothing ? To do so were to appreciate
ill the simplicity and sincerity of Homer. Were it not also to
misinterpret the law of all language ? Words are never empty
formalities at the outset; it was only a veritable meaning that
made them. Men do not go about consciously giving names to
nonentities. As well suppose a living body to have come into
being without the action of any organizing force as persuade
one’s self that language is originated without belief. Words, like
men, may grow old and die ; but only by sincere, vital action
are they born. It is true that defunct vocables sometimes have
their Hades here above ground, wandering about as shadowy
semblances of their former selves, neither well dead nor yet
alive. But Homer belongs to the young world; and his words
are not merely living, they are in excellent health, with red
blood in them, and a bloom on the cheek. When, therefore,
�502
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
he says, “ Sing, 0 Goddess,” one may be sure that the invoca
tion is no piece of perfunctory compliment, but that his heart
keeps pace with his tongue.
Upon whom does he call ? The question may be asked with
interest, for there is in this part of the old Greek mythology a
profound significance, a fine soul of meaning, which remains
true for us, and will be true forever, however its forms may
prove transitory or grow strange. The “ Goddess ” is the
Muse, — the Muses considered as one divinity. The Muses,
again, were said to be daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, or
Memory. It will be no waste of study to inquire into the sig
nificance of this parentage, and with Homer’s devout appeal in
mind.
Zeus, in the old Hellenic conception, is the eternal One, the
unitive, sovereign genius of being. The physical meaning of
the word, we are told, is sky, the pure heaven, changeless, allembracing ; but by a deeper and truer meaning it denotes the
inner divine sky of the soul, rounding in, with its translucent,
indivisible unity, the divided opacity and discord of time.
*
“ From One all things proceed, and into the same are re
solved,” says Musaeus, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius. Zeus is
this One, but rather in the moral sense, that of rule, than in
the more metaphysical sense, which Musaeus seems to have in
* All strictly primitive words seem to have at first a like twofold significance,
physical-spiritual. It is the trick of lexicographers to represent the physical mean
ing as primary, the higher sense as only secondary and superinduced. Let us test
this procedure in a single instance. The original sense of rectus is said to be
straight; the secondary sense, right. We turn, however, to the root, reg, and find
that the nearest word to this, formed immediately from it, is rex (regs), a king, or
straightener in the strictly moral sense. Could evidence be clearer that the moral
meaning was in the word from the first, at the root of it, and that, in making it a
mere afterthought, the lexicographer has followed, not the indications of language,
but his own whim of opinion ? I cannot but anticipate a sure determination of the
fact, one day, that man is a speaker only as he is a spiritual being; pure spiritual
sensibility joined with a lower kind of impressibility to produce root-words. At
first the words are held as common property by the two producing factors, nor is
their twofold character for a long time, it may be, explicitly recognized. Zeus
meant originally, I suppose, both a physical object, and a spiritual reality signified
by that object; but to the first namers this meaning was strictly single, not double.
When reflective discrimination began, and the word, instead of being divided in
itself, and made to bear two widely distinct meanings, like our word heaven, went
wholly over to the higher, the indication is that this import was the more powerful
in it from the start.
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
503
mind. It is the testimony of language that man uttered his
impression of this comprehending One when he first said sky ;
and since such an object must have been among the earliest
named, we can trace that supreme recognition to the very
dawn of his conscious being. All-comprehending, all-recon
ciling spiritual unity, —it is an import which the soul en
shrines from the first and forever. And this is the Homeric
Zeus, progenitor of the Muse.
On the other hand, Mnemosyne, Memory, symbolizes the sum
total of such things as memory is concerned with, — incident,
accident, event, whatever happens. In wide contrast, there
fore, to the peace of eternity, she images the storied variety
and conflict of time, the world of things eventful, — of multi
plicity, diversity, contrariety, contention, the surface-world of
Nature and man, with heterogeneity and mutation for its insep
arable characteristics.
Thus in Zeus and Mnemosyne we have, on the one side, the
universe in the everlasting peace and rest of pure unity, — on
the other side, the universe in the character of dividedness,
changefulness, with a myriad of diverse features and conflict
ing energies, here playing through a colored pliantasmagory
of magic mutation, there yawning in chasms of hate, set against
itself, crashing in upon itself, blind with contending passion,
black with tragic fate. From these opposites the Muse is born,,
— from these as at once opposite, and yet joined, made one in
spousal love.
The Muse, then, is that symphony of existence which arises
from the conjunction of these two terms, Spiritual Being in its
essential pure oneness, and the world of finite character and
action, of diversity and evanescence, the world of time. This
conjunction is Music, — “ music of the spheres,” in the Pythag
orean phrase: an imagination peculiar to Pythagoras only in
form of statement. It is upon this melodious Voice of the
All that Homer calls devoutly, and of which he would be but
the reporter or secretary.
Here we lay hold upon the prime fact by which he stands as
the type of poetic genius. To him it is existence itself that is
tuneful. Through the diversity of characters, the conflict of
passions, and the whirl of events, the divine secret of the world
�504
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
sings to his soul.
*
The impassioned, it may be infuriate, toss
ing, warring, woe of time gives, as he deems, but the notes, out
of which the Spirit of the All makes up its eternal harmony.
That antique imagination may be embraced with serious
modern conviction. Zeus and Mnemosyne symbolize still the
two opposites, of which poesy is the wedding festival. Who
ever truly sings, be it “ the sweet psalmist of Israel” or Greek
2Eschylus, the author of the Book of Job or that of the Excur
sion, sings their espousal. The universe is unity ; being rests
in spiritual peace and poise forever. The sky is never clouded ;
only the earth is clouded. Nevertheless, there is the constant
antithesis to this wholeness and repose, — antithesis expressed
in ten thousand shapes, and pushed with such inexorable
energy and excess that we wonder how the bands of eternity
do not burst, and suffer the world to welter in immitigable
craze. Oppositions and emulations arise, multiply, rage, gain
appetite by what they feed on; countless tribes of creatures live
only by slaughter, created to kill; existence sprouts all over
in horns, fangs, tusks, claws, while from its horrid alembic
venoms, hates, envies distil, and drip, drip upon its own blister
ing heart; hungry pestilences devour nations, — then, like the
boa, retire and sleep into new hunger, that they may return to
new feast; “ the earthquake smacks its mumbling lips o’er
some thick-peopled city,” or the volcano binds about it, while yet
living, a shroud of fire; strife is around man, and strife is with
in him; the lightning thrusts its blazing scymitar through
his roof, the thief creeps in at his door, and remorse at his
heart. Who, looking on these things, does not acknowledge
that man is indeed fearfully as well as wonderfully made ?
Who would not sometimes cry, 0 that my eyes were a foun
tain of tears, that I might weep, not the desolations of Israel
alone, but the hate of Israel to Edom and of Edom to Israel,
the jar, the horror, the ensanguined passion and ferocity of Na
* Virgil, on the contrary, regards himself only as the singer. It is true, that, after
announcing himself as such, he makes a formal invocation to the Muse, but misses
even formal propriety in doing so. For he does not pray the Divinity to pour
for his ear the melody of existence, nor even to exalt his soul and make it melo
dious, but only to apologize, if possible, for the strange conduct of the Olympians :
Mihi causas memora: Let the Muse, since she visits in that family, tell what set on
Juno to pursue with revenges that remarkably nice man, my hero.
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
505
ture ? But when we would despair, behold we cannot. Out
of the conscious heart of humanity issues forever, more or less
clearly, a voice of infinite, pure content: “ Though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
for Thou art with me.” Sometimes, when our trial is sorest,
that voice is clearest, singing as from the jaws of death and
the gates of hell. And now, though the tears fall, they become
jewels as they fall; and the sorrow that begot them wears
them in the diadem of its more than regal felicity. We, too,
rest in the rest of Being; the changeless axis is here, it is in our
souls ; an’d around it all the movement of existence becomes
orbital.
Eternal rest, endless unrest, — rest and unrest, it would
seem, of the same universal whole. There is comprehending
unity, that nothing invades, nothing eludes ; there is yawn
ing chasm that seems to go through the world, cleaving its
very heart. Every globule of existence spins between these
irreconcilable opposites.
And yet they are not irreconcil
able, for they are reconciled, though it be ineffably.
Now it is this tossing rest, this multiple unity, this contradic
tory and contending identity, that makes the universe epical;
and to represent this within practicable limits, embodying in
human speech the enticement, the awful, infinite charm of that
mystery forever resolved and forever remaining, is the grand
task of the epic artist.
The poet is the restorer of wholeness. He can strike the
universal chord, that of identity, or spiritual unity. But he does
this, observe, not by confounding distinction, blurring charac
teristic, hiding difference, explaining away contradiction, but,
on the contrary, by displaying them. No one adheres with
a fidelity religious like his to special character, finite fact.
Individual feature and complexion, the peculiar expression of
all objects, the circumstance and finest edge of all events, are,
as it were, sacred to him, and come forth from beneath his pen
with an exquisite, loving exactness of rendering. He will
give you form, color, manner, gait, garb, tone of voice, measure
of stature, tune of thought; minute he will be as Nature her
self, nothing small to him which is characteristic; his very hu
man condition he will, as it were, forsake, to spring with
vol. evil. — no. 221.
33
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
grass-blades and hum with bees, to ripple with the ripening
wheat and pass in the shadow of flying clouds, to dance with
sunshine on the sea, or join its sprite-like hide-and-seek among
quivering leaves ; sorrow, too, and dismay he will depict as
with a kind of love, — tempests that rage across the green
fields of humanity, clothed in night and whirling along boughs
rent from the tree of life, — frosts that descend untimely upon
vernal years, to leave their blossoms shrivelled and all the
glory of their garniture gone forever ; and by this chase of di
versities and celebration of contradictions he will bring out the
refrain of the living whole, the repose, the unity, the infinite
content of being.
Contrast this procedure with that of the mere generalizer.
The latter spares himself all this delicate and subtile exacti
tude, very likely thinks it trivial. Betaking himself to gen
eralities, he evaporates one generality into another more diffuse
and vague, and, by an incessant elimination of feature, arrives
finally at a statement the most general possible. At best he
has attained only congruity, not consanguinity. His thought
holds together, suppose, in itself; it does not bring souls, na
tures, together; it does not awaken the sense of a universal
kindred, wherein the one immortal heart is felt to beat.
Even the naturalist, patient, tireless observer, faithful by his
good-will to Nature in her speciality and her unity alike, can
draw creatures into association only by mere points of outward
resemblance,’ as two kinds here by a likeness in the hoof, two
kinds there by a similarity in the hide, again two kinds by ap
proximation in the shape of a scale. There is a catalogue of
superficial resemblances, not community. The poet does not
thus go on merely to enumerate points of external peculiarity
and resemblance; he, on the one side, delineates the individ
ual thing in the very feature, color, and aroma of its special
being, yet, on the other hand, keeps up the interior conversa
tion of each with all. Not by dead similarities, but by the liv
ing, flowing fellowship of heart-language, do the unlikes of
voiceful Nature blend and symphonize in his thought.
Mr. Ruskin censures a dictum of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to the
effect that poetry deals only with what is general and perma
nent, to the exclusion of transient particulars. The eloquent
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
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critic brings forward good instances, with which Wordsworth
offered him an abundant supply, to show, on the contrary, that
the poet has an inevitable eye for minute traits and evanescent
expression. The truth is parted between them. The poet sees
the varying surfaces of Nature, and feels in them her constant
heart. By a delicately true portrayal of what is most limited
and transient, he appeals to a sentiment universal and peren
nial. Playing with the play of Nature, flitting with winged
fancy through all the variety of her manifold forms and
changing hues, he yet feels in all, and by the magic of melodi
ous suggestion can make others to feel, that inner identity, that
unceasing, ineffable return into oneness, which in the hidden
sanctuary of existence is a joy of espousal forever. It is the
ringing of these marriage-bells of Nature that is the music be
hind the words of his verse.
To be cordially sensible of an illimitable kindred, which,
moreover, is not only boundless in scope, but divine in kind,
purer far and richer in every beautiful claim and blessed re
sponse than any blood relationship, — is it not a surpassing
delight ? But the felicity comes to the last, finest edge, when
one may enter into this immortal fellowship without loss of in
dividual character, and, speaking there only his own vernacular,
may join by means of it, and with no foreign nor provincial ac
cent, in that language of the heart of humanity wherein was
never yet a confusion of tongues.
Man is a stranger in the world, looking on with remote, un
related eye, till the Muse make him at home there. This,
touching upon all that seems most shut up to itself, most set
apart from the spirit and sympathy of man, awakens a surpris
ing refrain of fellowship in his breast. Now he lives a life not
bounded by the limits of his individual constitution. It is as if
an invisible system of nerves ramified from his breast, with a
pole in every passing shadow, in every star, in whatsoever has
form of being or seeming to the sense. Once that this is rightly
addressed, his own being is reflected in all, claimed by all; his
voice has an illimitable echo ; his heart blends its beating with
the vast rhythm of Nature; everywhere are relation and re
sponse ; from sun and moon look down glorified human faces ;
wood and river teem with half-humanities, that sway in the
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
trees and slip in the tide ; from the lifted mountain-tops, and
from the waste grandeur of the reticent, never-covenanting sea,
comes a language at once theirs and his own ; the bladed grass
claims kindred from beneath his feet, and the shadow cast by
a stone on the moor moves him with some deep home-feeling,
as if it were inscrutably inwrought with shadowy memories of
the cradle and the mother’s lullaby.
The poet can touch these nerves, and give sympathy the
happiness of that unmeasured scope. But he can thus touch
them, observe, only at their poles on the surfaces of Nature.
Of this a sufficient suggestion is given by the economy of the
human body. The brain itself is insensitive; its feeling, at
least its pleasurable feeling, is found at the fingers’ ends, at the
surfaces and extremes of the body. So it is that this univer
sal heart in man is to be happily awakened only at the fingers’
ends, the farthest reach, of its manifold relationship. Hence
it is that the purest poetry is most objective. This touches the
heart healthily, where the nerves of imaginative sympathy
come to the surface. Introspection, on the contrary, invades
the system, and strikes the nerves midway, hence is unhealth
ful and painful.
It is only in the sense of uni’ty with the whole that the
heart finds peace. Chasm is brutal. Yet he who seeks unity
otherwise than in the diversity of Nature and movement of
life, he who seeks it by prying and intrusion, finds, not a
charmed repose, but only sickness. Nature sings to him who
respects her secret, and who only by a reverent remoteness
comes near; and he who sings to others will scrupulously
keep up the polarity of life, displaying identity only through
the medium of peculiarity.
Take as an illustration Burns’s “ To a Mouse.” The “ wee
beastie ” is represented to the life, its habit and condition given
without varnish.
“ That wee bit heap o leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! ”
Leaves and stubble, got by nibbling: this is a veritable mouse,
no transparent sham, like Dryden’s “ Hind and Panther,”
which are seen at a glance to be no more than a pair of cut
and dried, theologues masquerading on four legs, whereof
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
509
two are evidently broomsticks. But while a mouse, it is yet
man ; and the poet only brings his delineation to ripeness,
when he says,—
“ Me, thy poor earthborn companion
And fellow mortal.”
The outward circumstance retains its distinction, the hearts
touch and beat together, and we have a truly poetical situation.
Emerson’s “Humble-Bee” furnishes an illustration that will
bear even closer inspection; for the external peculiarity is
shown yet more pointedly, while the interior sympathy is not
less, though 'suggested with a delicate reticence that adds to
the charm. The painting is so minutely and exquisitely exact
that I have sometimes said, should Nature one day lose the
breed of bees, and forget what they were, she might recover
the type from this model. Yet who reads without feeling that
the humble-bee is one of us ?
“ Yellow-breeched philosopher,” —
it does not come jarring in, but belongs there ; and because
this open stroke of sympathy — in which, however, the humor
still hints at distinction — is consistent with a piece of painting
so objective, we have here a poem in the right sense of the word.
A like effect is reached, when a peculiar human character is
so pictured that we at once perceive its remoteness from our
selves and feel it all in ourselves. The more entire, isolated,
unapproachable, the more poetic its impression, if only it be
so depicted that to every stroke of the delineation our hearts
vibrate response. The more peculiar it shows itself, the more
does it awaken in us the sense of our community. This is
poetry.
It may be said, then, that poetry is the expression of com
prehending spiritual unity by means of that which opposes and
apparently denies it. This definition, however, is here only
provisional. I hope soon to substitute for it another, which,
while embracing this, shall be more adequate. At present let
us obtain with precision what is in this.
First, let it be observed that the character of things which is
opposed to their unity with the soul must not be in its own
place denied. Even to disguise it there is to make its sub
sequent identification with the heart ridiculous. Dress the
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
mouse in jacket and trousers, as we sometimes see monkeys in
the street, then say, “Fellow mortal,” and the by-standers burst
out laughing. Set the bee to discoursing on fate and free-will,
and “ yellow-breeched philosopher ” loses its tone of fine sym
pathetic humor, to become a sorry jest.
Observe, secondly, that the separation of objects from the
heart of the poet and of man is maintained by one order of ap
prehension, while the identity exists only to another. The one
is bluntly, stubbornly, indomitably maintained by the prosaic
understanding; the other is melodiously affirmed by the imag
ining heart, eternal priest at the marriage altars of Nature.
Moreover, it is the interest of imagination that the prosaic fac
ulty should hold its ground, yielding never an inch. There
can be no espousal, if there is no duality, — no making one, un
less there are two. The sense of spiritual community plays
over somewhat which contradicts it; and it is this playing
over which constitutes the poetic act. The imagination abhors
confusion, though it craves community. It leaves finite objects,
merely as such, to stand by and for themselves, refusing all
cordial kindred with the spirit of man ; and then, in neverthe
less making fellowship between them and the human soul, it
shows these objects to be capable of such fellowship only in
quite another character than that which is proper to them
as things merely. I will illustrate these points by a stanza of
description taken from Wordsworth : —
“ The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields
Are hung, as if with golden shields,
Bright trophies of the sun !
Like a fair sister of the sky,
Unruffled doth the blue lake lie,
The mountains looking on.”
Well, this is fine ! — the understanding would say. Are we to
believe that the fields have put on the corn as a suit of clothes ?
or that the said patches of corn, while having that sartorial
character, are also captured shields, which the sun has hung
up to commemorate his victories ? or that the sky and lake
are a kind of Jane and Nancy in the same family? or that
the mountains really do look on ? No ; so far as the under
standing is concerned, these statements are made only to be
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
511
disbelieved. To it they are sheer untruth, and are meant for un
truth. The understanding is pre-engaged to dispute, to deny, to
repugn them altogether. Just that is a part of the programme;
and to leave it out would spoil the performance. Did not the
statement infold its own contradiction on a lower scale, and
thereby obtain the opposition of the prosaic understanding, like
the opposition of the viol-string to the bow, it were not poetic
truth. To say that Peter is clad, that Jane and Nancy are sis
ters, or look as if they were sisters, and that Hezekiah looks on,
might be to affirm what is entirely credible ; but such truth is
not poetic truth, for the reason that it does not address itself to
spiritual credence. In order that imagination and spiritual ap
prehension may be reached,there must be that “play over” we
have spoken of, — therefore somewhat over which, and in con
trariety to which, the play goes on. Thus the great privilege of
the spirit to find the whole world kin is freed from confusion
with any such community as the prosaic mind can recognize.
I have thus far spoken only of poetry ; let it now be said
that I have constantly had in view the being of man, regarding
this as the poem of poems, — fast locked to any metaphysic
which does not approach with a key corresponding to its poetic
quality. In the being of man, in the universe of God, there is
that “ play over.” It is, indeed, the grand secret; he that finds
it out reads the Sphinx’s riddle, and may save his soul alive.
Finding it out perfectly, he will know what Spirit is ; and until
one knows that, does he in the highest sense know anything ?
In order to clear up this matter, and prepare the way for
further exposition, I wish now to establish a primary scale of
degrees, that we may see definitely what is over, what under,
and the validity of each in its own kind. And to invite a
vigorous attention, I may say that we have now come to the
hinge upon which all turns.
Nature as thing is Force and Form, no more. Scrutinized
to any extent, it will exhibit only these characters, fixed force
and form.
To the world of things corresponds in man the perceptive
understanding. This finds in things a thing, — character, if
one may speak so, — finds, that is, their special determinations,
and the consequent isolation of each thing in itself. It is, we
�512
Epic Philosophy.
'
[Oct.
might say, a brace between things, to keep them.forever apart,
without interior communication. It sees every object—ox,
grass, hill, river, stone, man — as only itself, utterly locked up
in its special identity.
Becoming scientific, however, the understanding not only
discriminates, and specially identifies, but finds connections,
and looks toward unity. But the unity is on the same level
with the diversity, and is therefore only partial. There is
unity of form between man and a fish, as both are vertebrate
animals; there is diversity of form, as the one is a mammal
and the other not such. The community of the two, and the
special, isolate identity of each, are alike of form, and are
therefore mutually limiting. Unity, accordingly, is never
attained. The scientific intellect is more full than the ordinary
perceptive understanding; but it works within the same limits,
has the same kind of recognitions. It recognizes form, force,
the constancy of force, and, lastly, as its highest perception,
the form offorce. What we call “ natural law ” is, of course,
simply force formulated, that is, constant in measure and
definite in character. Gravitation, electricity, chemical affinity,
do not differ as force, but only as forms of force. Force and
form, then, constitute the whole character of Nature in one
aspect; and to it in this aspect the prosaic understanding cor
responds.
Accordingly, the understanding can never, in any adequate
manner, say God. It attempts often enough, with stretched
mouth, to achieve that grand enunciation, and often supposes
the feat accomplished. But its God can be only some partic
ular object or force, supposably an immensely great thing, but
after all only a thing, one thing among others. Of late some
of its officers are making bold to say that no such Thing is discoverable. “ God ? ” some Lewes will say ; u what force or
form of force is it ? Is gravitation God ? Is chemical affinity
God ? If neither of these, what force, then, and where is it ? ”
Suppose I answer, that God is in those forces, and in all others ?
u In them ? ” he may reply ; “ how in them ? how in gravi
tation ? As gravitation ? Then he is gravitation; and we
have two words for the same thing. As somewhat other than
gravitation ? But what ? Do we discern in gravitation any
thing but itself ? ”
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
513
“ But there is somewhat which makes it,” I plead.
“ Makes what ? ” he will say. “ Makes stones fall ? Grav
itation does that. Is there a making behind this making ?
Well, double, triple, centuple, if you will, the makings, all we
come to is that stones are made to fall. There is a force which
has this character; and wherever it is, the character of it is
the same. Though the note of hand be indorsed by a hun
dred individuals one after another, the value of it remains
the same.”
“ But,” I say, making a last effort, “ God is the unity of all
forces.”
He smiles provokingly. “ You mean, perhaps, that he is
that correlation and mutual convertibility of forces of which
we are beginning to learn. Truly, I give you joy of a God so
substantial! ”
I leave the savant in possession of the field, easily victorious.
It should be frankly confessed, that, as by no peeping and pry
ing and inferring among the fiddle-strings can we discover the
genius of the composer, so by no inspection of the formulations
of force do we obtain the smallest glimpse of infinite Spirit.
Here we are, then, locked utterly into the limits of finite
Nature. Can we, after all, make escape ? I do not inquire
whether we find in our own breasts a hint of spiritual compre
hension and freedom, — we undoubtedly do find such; but it
is said that this subjective impression, being contradicted by
everything else in the universe, must be suppressed as mere
private prejudice or illusion. Some indeed bravely refuse, and
pledge their faith to the testimony of “ consciousness ” ; the
other party smile superior to “ consciousness ” none the less ;
the contestants find no common ground. We will therefore
face the difficulty, and inquire whether it is possible to dis
cover a road leading from Nature to Spirit, and to Spirit as in
itself all. I think it can be found, and without any tedious
groping.
Be it observed, then, that Nature has another character, very
different frqm the one just noted, — the character, namely, of
Sign or Expressiveness. To the primitive civilizers of hu
manity it is scarcely known otherwise than in this nobler char
acter. Everywhere the first grand sallies of the human mind
�514
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
overleap the fixed constitution of things, and alight upon some
what of a higher order, which the world of things suggests.
Is it not to this overleaping that all human speech is due ?
Man looks upon an object, and between it and the eye there
springs up a felt poetic significance, which, before reflection
has come to complicate mental action, is no sooner felt than it
issues by a responsive sign, a word. Spontaneous naming is
the act of identifying an object with its poetic significance,
declaring that the thing is what it signifies. Only while the
expression or suggestion of objects is taken in entire good faith
as their reality is man a producer of root-words.
In the case of words which convey distinctively a moral,
metaphysical, or spiritual import, this repose upon the sign
character of Nature is obvious. Spirit is breath; right is
straight; wrong is crooked, — wrung, turned forcibly aside;
light is truth or knowledge, — “ the light which enlighteneth
every man that cometh into the world ” (the Parsees are said
to worship fire or light, that is, they worship what it signifies,
as Christians also do) ; heaven, too, is God, — “ kingdom of
God ” and “ kingdom of heaven ” we say indifferently; warmth
is love; coldness is indifference; and so on: it were easy to
multiply familiar examples, — and I seek no others, — to the
weariness of the reader.
But I believe, still further, that man’s ability to name physi
cal objects in the directest manner depends no less, though
less obviously, upon their sign-character. Were they to man,
as to the dog and ox, mere force and form, he would respond
to them, in the animal fashion, by the forces of his organism
only, by appetite, aversion, anger, fear, and the like. The
aspect of green grass excites only the stomach of a cow : here
is the mere relation of finite to finite ; and accordingly the
creature opens its mouth, not to speak, but to bite, — not to
utter the object, but to swallow it. Man, on the contrary, sees
natural objects as picture, suggestion, significance, and speaks
them because to him they are speaking. How could he repre
sent them by signs, did they not present themselves as signifi
cant, and as veritably present in their significance ?
“ Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth forth knowledge.” Verily, statements so noble as this,
�1868.]
Epic' Philosophy.
515
coming to us from a far-off antiquity, might tempt one to think
that the primitive poetic mind of humanity took off the cream
of truth, and left its skimmed milk to science. But can we
not perceive that day and night are indeed and forever voice
ful ? Speech runs and ripples over all the surfaces of Nature:
here in grand affirmative tides, Amazons and Missouris of sig
nificance ; there in vast, perpetual eddies of reverse meaning;
again in whirling and dancing equivocations, evanescent half
expressions, with which only the flitting instability of fancy
can keep pace. Speech breaks out as from an inner heart in
things, and wraps itself as a many-colored mantle about them,
hiding what they are in what they suggest; insomuch that the
understanding must search as with a candle to discover be
neath that glorious disguise their fixed and specific character.
Science, coming late and with labor, tries to lift the mantle,
tries to divest Nature of her garment of meaning; but one fold
falls down as another is raised ; only by endless pertinacity of
industry and wide combination of effort is the thing at last de
nuded, and seen as it is in itself.
.Half the world is now busy in this labor. “ Off with it! ”
men say; “off with that garment of suggestion wherewith
Nature clothed herself to the untaught intelligence of hu
manity!” As the work goes on, there are huzzas mingled with
moanings, complainings, reproaches, — huzzas over notable pro
gress achieved, complaint that so great a labor needs now
to be done. The first men did us a mischief, it would seem,
by permitting Nature to assume that array of significance.
Had things been seen from the start as things really are, then
what toil and difficulty had our age been spared 1 But those
men, perverse, must go and be “ theological,” or “ metaphysi
cal,” or the like : hinc illce lachrymce. The greater, however,
the glory of our age, when, despite these needless hindrances,
it peeps and pries, until at length the world of things appears
without disguise. We complain, but still more do we exult.
The great enterprise prospers ; off it comes, that pictured
array ; the Thing lies bare !
Not quite, however. Seen only as it is in itself, the world
of things is not yet, nor, in my judgment, is likely to be.
Never yet was there a mind dry and prosaic enough to behold
�516
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct,
any object in the mere light of the understanding, — to see in
a horse, for example, only anatomy and physiology. To Dryas
dust also, even to that portentous specimen of the genus, the
Dryasdust of science, — Herbert Spencer, say, — the neck of
the war-horse is indeed clothed with thunder, the Pleiades
have sweet influences, the zephyr whispers, the storm roars,
morning blushes, the' sun rises rejoicing, night is vocal with
solemn suggestion, and the blue heaven more, much more, than
some gases and an optical illusion. Let Mr. Spencer do his
best to see in Nature, as he says, only “ force,” it will be
to him also a language, will speak to his sensibility. Let
Briareus use all his hundred hands, the mantle of meaning
will fall down, and with its lettered folds wrap the heart of the
Titan himself.
Por by the Word the worlds were indeed made, as the Scrip
tures say. “ And God said, Let there be light, and there
was light.” Was ; for light itself is but a shining syllable,
and darkness another, that shines only in the breast of the
Speaker, not outwardly; and all the universe exists, word-like,
only for and through its expressiveness. By the Word, by the
perpetual act of Spirit giving expression to its inherent import,
— which is its substance, itself, for Spirit is Absolute Import,
self-affirmed, — the worlds were made, and do exist. Because
Nature is spoken, it speaks ; because it speaks, the spirit of
man, kindred with the eternal Word, may espouse in Nature
its own import, and evoke the representative world of uttered
thought and feeling.
The imaginative intelligence recognizes in visible existence
this character of Sign, and reads off from it a significance for
the soul. Force and form, says the understanding; import,
says the poetic intelligence. This is thus and so, reports the
one; this means thus, announces the other. The former
regards the finite world as substantial, and as asserting only
itself; the latter regards the finite world as denying its own
substantiality in behalf of that which it signifies.
*
* Swedenborg sought to establish a science of significances, a science of Nature
on that higher degree. Hence the gulf which separates him from the ordinary man
of science. The latter is engaged in supplying what, with reference to the import
of Nature, we must call its grammar; he looks to the classification and syntactical
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
517
“ As denying its own substantiality,” I say. How is that ?
I hope the reader will say, How is that ? and will say it with
a purpose to be pointedly dissatisfied, unless the question be
answered clearly and precisely.
A sign, observe, is necessarily the sign of that which itself is
not. It exists only to say, “ I am not it,” and in doing so to
point effectually toward that which is. As the finger on the
sign-board is not the road or city, as the spoken word man is
not man, but only sound, so is it with all signs whatsoever:
they point wholly away from themselves, being in themselves
nothing to the purpose ; they are there only for the eye to pass
over; and, considered with reference to their real purpose,
their entire being is a mere flitting away and vanishing into
that which they suggest. Plainly, that which is meant by a
word is the real thing. Plainly, a word, by the fact of having
a meaning, implicitly denies that itself is at all the real thing.
The meaning made the word, holds it in possession, and is all
the being of it. The significance is the substantial fact; the
sign, by the very fact of being such, professes itself the con
trary. If now we venture to apply to the universe this easy
and plain discrimination, all the difficulty will be in the ven
ture, none in the application. Two and two are still neither
more nor less than four, be the figures written in hundredths
of an inch, or from Labrador to Cape Horn. Making bold to
write our figures large, we may say with some confidence that
the natural universe, as Sign, only spoken into being, and
having its being only in its meaning, denies its own substantive
existence ; the meaning of it, not itself, is the real Fact; it is
but a pointing, as of an index-finger, to that which indeed is.
What does it say is ?
When one reads a word, considering it as a word, what does
he implicitly affirm ? Or what does the word itself, by the fact
relation of its etymons or elements. Now Shakespeare and Nature alike, merely
as parsed, are void of meaning : we arrive at an order of arrangement, and at nothing
more. Swedenborg sought not merely to parse, but to read ; he assumed a meaning,
and attempted a scientific exposition of it. I am not of those who think his success
perfect, or other than very imperfect; sometimes it is only the dignity of the enter
prise which forbids one to laugh. On the other hand, one must own that a gram
mar of the cosmos, were it complete, would not be sufficient. To do Lindley
Murray on that scale is to work at a large task indeed; but though one parse the
universe, is it enough merely to parse ?
�518
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
of being such, imply ? It implies, and he who reads it im
plicitly affirms, Mind. Only from Mind could words issue ;
only to it are they expressive, — that is, indeed words. When
the natural universe appears as expressive, a manifold sign, a
language, it affirms Absolute Mind, Spirit. Only from this
could a universal significance issue, only by it be embraced.
If Nature mean anything, Spirit is what it means. And so
the human race has thought; its apprehension of this truth is
embodied in the confessions and litanies of all ages.
Now to read the world as a language, finding in it an import
for the soul, is the essentially poetic act. We have thus ar
rived at the final definition promised: Poetry is the free read
ing up and down from Nature to Spirit and from Spirit to
Nature, each seen in the other. The outward feature of Nature
and life must be preserved, with the finest, most delicate ex
actitude, that we may not read in a blurred type; and yet in
all the soul must find its own immanent secret.
The understanding, meanwhile, holds out sturdily against
all this. Its business is to paint the index on the guide-board,
that this may be there for that traveller, the spiritual imagina
tion, to go by. Its utmost stretch is to observe that the travel
ler does go by, — that, looking on the sky, for example, the
untaught man has cried, “ Dyaus,” “ Zeus,” “ God,” making a
sign of it, and flying infinitely beyond. But it can never verify
this enunciation, nor indeed can believe in it; and, trying to
give some account of that passage, it will strain a point and
say, “ Rhetoric.” This, too, is liberal of it, extremely liberal;
it has grown to be a highly polite and tolerant understanding,
when it gives the name of rhetoric to that passing by; before
arriving at these handsome manners, it had bluntly said,
“ Nonsense.”
Has it now been made clear what poetry is ? And has it
also been rendered apparent, or at least credibly indicated,
that the conscious being of man is itself, in the sense ex
plained, a poem 1 If so, we may proceed to consider the epic
in particular, anticipating that epical truth will be found not
only in books, but in the fact of the universe.
We already know that the epic will represent comprehend
ing spiritual unity, and beneath this its apparent contradiction.
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
519
We know also that the latter will be made to suggest just that
which it seemingly contradicts, and so to negate its own nega
tion. This is the character of all poetry; but what distin
guishes the epic ?
Its primary distinction is, that here the scale of the draw
ing is strictly and explicitly universal. Existence in its full
breadth is the ground; the import of life in its full depth is
the theme. Here are to be the ultimate poles: the pure
Infinite, in contrast and correlation with finite Nature, — the
sovereign, perfect consciousness of man, in like contrast and
correlation with the most poignant contradiction supplied by
his natural experience.
First, the unity is here that of Being itself, absolute Spirit.
It is not merely a relative and subjective unity, that of mouse
and mountain daisy, beggar and king, with me, but the pure
One, which in oneness comprehends all. The oneness is, indeed,
the oneness, — the One to which, in the highest sense, there is
no Other, — absolute solvent, that liquefies all, englobing worlds
like drops of dew, cosmic dew of suns and stars, mist of milky
ways; and which, having pictured itself in Nature, whispers
in the enchanted heart of man, I am.
* First, then, the eter
nal Zeus, rest of all hearts, community of all natures. No
epical thought or genius has man without a consciousness of
this perfect, universal Identity, this all-embracing sky of the
soul.
Let this point be emphasized. What sort of epic were that
wherein this ultimate import of the spiritual consciousness
should not nobly and expressively appear ? The sort of epic
which is made such only by the title. The world has seen
such, but could not keep them long in view. The Genius of
the Whole is somewhat necessary to the parts, be it in a tree
or in a universe, and so in a poem which attempts to sing the
perennial character and relations of man’s life.
It is not a little curious to see how the grasshopper intelli
gence of Voltaire skips about this prime requisite of the epic
* It is peculiar also to the epic that this Unity is made explicit, represented ob
jectively, while in the drama proper it remains implicit, felt, not seen, a light to
enlighten, but no sun visible. Compare Homer and Shakespeare. -The Prometheus
hovers between the two.
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*
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
in his Essai sur La Poesie Epique. That he should attempt
such a topic is laughable. Few men have been more skilful
to break a jest; but here he was broken upon one. I once '
knew a youth who fancied himself a musical genius, because,
having not the slightest ear for music, he was never to his own
apprehension out of tune. At sight of a note he could promptly
produce a noise; and though, to compare small things with
great, it was like Milton’s gates of hell grating harsh thunder,
yet the innocent creature, not being deaf, as the hearers wished
they were, never doubted that he was melodious, since beyond
doubt he was vocal. I was reminded of him by reading the
“ philosopher ” of Ferney upon the Epic ; for never, perhaps,
was a very clever man more incapable of following on the track
of an epic imagination, or less aware of his own inability. He
perceives that in Homer the gods appear; whereupon he briskly
announces, that, in order to an epic, the “ marvellous ” must be
introduced. Now the marvellous, merely as such, has no more
a place in epic poetry than in science; nor, indeed, does it find
place in any form of noble literature. The blank gape it pro
duces is in the mind just that vacant 0, that annular eclipse
of intelligence, which the moon-mouth would indicate by the
shape it assumes.
The Olympus of Homer is his holding-ground in the
heavens. Therein he casts anchor, and so rides out the
storms of time in security and peace of heart. He would have
“ marvelled ” to find himself without it, and adrift on the sea
of events. He sings first of all that which sings itself in him,
the great faith of his soul.
Homer has, indeed, a keen sympathy with that which, per
haps ironically, is called “ real life ” ; and therefore is able to
paint it with an almost matchless precision and verisimilitude.
He is heroically faithful to Mnemosyne. Here is her whole story,
told without euphemism. Here is, now the struggle, and now
the stupor of passion, now the rolling resistless tide, and now
the sudden eddy and refluence, of courage, — rivalries, too,
mixed irresolvably of noble and ignoble, honor and infamy,
spun into the same thread ; here are the ebb and flow, the toss
and whirl, the interlacement, the twisted tangle, the blind and
blurting conclusion, of actual life. Here also is the charm of
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
521
feature and picturesque detail; individual action stands out in
boldest relief, individual portraiture is lavished, while to all
this is added the effect of diverse costumes, tongues, manners :
the details, handled in a way less masterly, were bewildering .in
their multiplicity ; and the picture, but for its breadth, would be
motley in the crowding of colors and contrasts. But the artist
is at his ease with much as with little, — always the master.
And yet, were this all, the Iliad would not be a poem: it were
only a wondrous piece of photography.
It is that Olympian repose with which Homer is able to over
arch this field of action, it is that peace of the All which he
makes to breathe about the storm and change of man’s little
world, that shows him a poet rather than a photographer,
Homer rather than De Foe. As his terrestrial observation is
wide, genial, and exact, so the faith of his soul, its hold upon
celestial Unity, is sure. To both he is just, and to each in. its
place and kind. And the objects of both, though opposite,
blend in harmony ; and the greater, though not only greater,
but all, does extinguish the less ; and the less, though it re
mains in vigor of feature and ruddiness of strength, passes
while it remains, and only the One-and-All is. Thus his pic
ture became a glass wherein the men of his time saw their life
with more than mortal vision. There the visible had become
ideal, yet retained its character ; there the invisible had be
come apparent, yet nowhere had broken the lines or blurred
the feature of actual experience. There the tempest of our
little life was seen rounded in with skies of everlasting calm :
participants in the divine secret, the mortal beholders looked
on and saw with new-informed eyes the cerulean circumambi
ent eternity, as now it condensed its viewless burden into our
whirling cloudlet of time, and anon drank it off into its own
transparent peace.
I confess we can no longer see the same perfectly in the
same mirror. To us the Iliad is not, cannot be, a pure epic.
Homer’s faith is not precisely that of the modern world; we
are able to follow him throughout only, as it were, by sympathy
prepense. That “ majestic, deathless head,” whose nod once
shook the world, and was the end of controversy to gods and
men, is now subject to the dispute of any too ready tongue,
vol. evil. — no. 221.
34
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
sovereign no more. But the eternal Zeus lives under another
name, or without name ; Greece and Ilium we have, like the
poor, always with us ; the epos of existence remains; and
Homer’s speech needs but a translation into that diction which
is behind the words, to become ours.
Have we sufficiently dwelt upon the first grand requisite of
the epic ? Is it clear that this celestial unity must appear in
the written poem, because in the being of man that sovereign
import plays forever over the discord and disunity of our out
ward experience ? The matter has, indeed, been treated
slightly, but I will suppose that enough has been offered on
this head. Let us, then, turn the leaf.
That unity must have its opposite ; the nature of poetry, as
we are aware, requires this. The opposite, too, must in the
present case be no trivial one ; the play-over of Absolute Spirit
should be worthy of it. The eagle does not display his
strength of wing by merely flying across a ditch that a grass
hopper might leap. Show us a chasm yawning all the way
from east to west, wide as the world ; and when the genius of
the universe shall cast over that an arch whose keystone is the
zenith of eternity, it will do somewhat. Of this consummate
act the epic poet is to make us witness.
Every epic artist represents, as antithetic to the unitive
genius of being, the infernal, — that is, sheer moral inversion,
sheer head-down of moral order, the one thing with which the
soul cannot be directly reconciled. Moreover, he wellnigh
seems to give this abhorrent thing full possession of the field.
“ I read in Homer,” said Goethe, “ that properly we enact
hell here below.” Is this a true reading of 'Homer ? And if
so, does Homer read the world truly ? I think that in both
Goethe and Homer it is a true reading.
Goethe’s statement is, indeed, one-sided; and he perhaps
betrayed his own limit, while illustrating his penetration, in
making it. He himself is a little lame of the right foot. His
Mephistopheles is a lovely devil, cap-a-pie like a West Point
cadet turned out for parade, — magister artium in his kind,
compared with Milton’s Titanic undergraduate. Here Goethe
is perfect; but the sovereign term, the Zeus, he does not man
age so well.
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
523
Yet his statement about Homer can hardly be impeached.
What is the situation described in the Iliad ? It is this : the
crime of a coxcomb has bound two noble nations by the loftiest
public sentiment of antiquity, the sentiment of national honor,
to the work of mutual destruction. The occasion of their san
guinary struggle is a deed they alike despise, a deed of which
the fit notice were a hearty kicking to the culprit. And yet
just that in each which dignifies and adorns their humanity it
engages to the pitiless destruction of the other.
Is it said, that honor, rightly understood, engaged them to
nothing of the sort ? It would not in us ; in them it did so ;
nor could they disobey its mandate without moral collapse.
Hector says, the Trojan women, not to speak of the men, would
despise him, did he decline the combat, odious to him as it
was. I think it apparent that the nation which had yielded
would have seen all the bands of order dissolve in the caustic
of contempt.
Highest enslaved by lowest, and compelled to rivet and re
*
new its own bonds, — that is the spectacle. What is intrinsi
cally good, beautiful, noble, made not only to serve evil ends,
but even to accept and consecrate the service,— that is the
hateful situation which Homer places before us.
Does it seem that the dilemma might have been easily
escaped ? There is the very bite of it. So easy to escape, —
and impossible! In Shakespeare we find the same. How
easy for Cordelia, by two words, to save her father and herself
the misery that ensues ! Easy, — and she cannot utter them.
It is her true, honorable love that forbids ; it is the voluble
hypocrisy of Regan and Groneril that compels her love to make
its own misconstruction. The ease, and yet the impossibility ;
the nobleness that immediately makes the impossibility ; the
ape’s hand that behind all manipulates the dead-lock: there,
there is the poison of it.
Know we of nothing similar in actual life ? Have we never
seen petty interests, petty strifes, spites, jealousies, envies, of
no more importance than the spit-spat of belligerent tom-cats,
roping in worthy natures with abhorrent bands, that multiply
and tighten till the anguish is intolerable ?
Thackeray’s she-catamount of a “ campaigner ” can hunt
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
Colonel Newcome to his death. What signifies her caterwaul,
pray ? He knows that it signifies nothing, and he dies of it;
the contemptibleness of the torture makes it only the more
torturing.
A politician rises in Congress, and proposes a compliment to
the shillalah invasion of Canada. Honorable men, who despise
the motion, feel compelled to sustain it; the election at New
York is at hand, and such a resolution once offered, they dare
not vote it down. In other circumstances, a war between
England and America might easily have arisen from this move
in the small game of an individual anxious to wipe out his
“ Know-Nothing ” record; and when it had arisen, the purest
patriotism in the land would have been driven, with loathing
stomach, to sustain its country’s quarrel. History, indeed, is
replete with instances — and did we see it behind the cur
tains, more instances would be known to us — wherein the
noblest sentiments of humanity have been harnessed beyond
help in the dirt-carts of sordid interest, while pitiful tricksters,
men who would sell what soul they have for a crossed sixpence,
and cheat Mephistopheles in the bargain, hold the reins, and
goad them on.
It is such a case from which the incident of Homer’s story
is drawn, — a case of moral head-down in the worst shape it
could assume to the mind of Grecian antiquity. The great
master does not hide, he is at pains to display, its hateful
features. By the avowed and intense revolt of Hector’s soul
from the work his hands must do, the abhorrent constraint of
the situation is made to the last degree biting. And that
nothing might be wanting to the keenness of the contradiction,
the Trojan prince is shown to us, not only in his valor, his
magnanimity, his sense of justice, but also in the tender nobility
of his domestic life. Andromache comes before us, queenly,
devoted, in all the pathos of wifely love; while the babe, drawn
to the father, shrinks away from the warrior, to suggest the
last rebuke of that dreadful strife. Meanwhile, in contrast
with this beautiful picture, — the noblest touch of tenderness
that has come to us from the old Hellenic world, — Paris has
signalized anew his luxurious infamy, and made the occasion
of the struggle, odious enough before, seem intolerable. And
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Epic Philosophy.
525
yet Hector must go to the field and to his doom, and An
dromache remain behind, helplessly awaiting her doom, and
doomed Ilium also abide her day.
All that follows upon the main situation is painted with
the like pitiless fidelity, — pitiless only in fidelity; for deep,
tender compassion is in the poet’s soul. Hero after hero comes
forth, uplifted with all soaring thoughts, godlike in bearing,
glorious in form and in renown; then before our eyes he goes
down; we see him clutch the earth in blind agony, we hear
his armor clank over him, — his only knell. Nothing is ex
plained away; and the pathos reaches its acme in the stern,
stern words, “ all-ending death.” The poet cuts off his under
standing from all succors, — breaks down the bridges behind
him. Only by a transcendent process does he escape into
repose. The will of Zeus is accomplished: that is all. To
Homer this all was enough. To the author of the Book of
Job it was enough.
*
A deep sea in which to cast anchor!
We in our day like shallower waters.
Why is it that Homer selects the sentiment of honor to be
thus enslaved ? Because he has the keenest sympathy with it.
In his eyes it is noblest, best; its enslavement, therefore,
shows most strikingly that moral inversion he wishes to dis
play. Nor is he alone in this procedure; other epic poets
have done the same. Dante is pre-eminently the poet of Love :
read the story of Francesca, wherein the pathos of the Inferno
culminates, and you find him distilling from the honey of love
a cup that he swoons but to taste. Milton is the apostle of
Liberty: in the Paradise Lost he has opened the heavens to
show us the impulse to just this, Liberty, turned toward the
pit, and drawing after it one third part of heaven’s host.
Goethe’s noblest trait is his intellectual devotion, his worship
of Truth: it is precisely this that in his half-epic betrays
Faust. In the Ramayana, a supreme emphasis is laid upon
truth in the sense of veracity, respect for the plighted word.
Describing his hero, Kapila says: “ This illustrious prince could
• * It is true that at the end of the Book of Job a kind of offset is got up.
But we may observe, that, in representing this pay-off appreciable by the under
standing, the poet—if he wrote the conclusion — falls from poetry to prose. The
poem was already complete.
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Epic Philosophy. >
[Oct.
willihgly renounce life, fortune the most opulent, desire the
most dear, — but the truth never.” Now it is just this, respect
for the plighted word, that brings about the catastrophe of the
poem.
Somewhere in his picture, and generally in the foreground,
the epic artist casts in this quintessence of contradiction, this
ink of indelible darkness, Worst from Best, — all the juices of
sweet life going to feed cancers. Moreover, the higher the
art and the grander the genius of the poet, the more resolutely
does he leave this terrible fact in possession of its proper field.
In the Ramayana, those who had fallen in the war against the
demon were, after the victory, magically restored to life. That
is impure art. In the Iliad, death has his prey undisputed, and
tragic fates pursue even the living. This is the manner of the
master.
Worst from Best, — is it found only in poems? The stout
common sense of Theodore Parker led him to say that Religion
may become prince of the devils. Whence was the inquisition
generated ? It was bred out of the Beatitudes and the song of
the angels, “ Peace on earth, good-will to men! ” What is
wourali poison, in which South American Indians dip their
arrows, compared with the envenomed conscience that even
the spirit of Christendom has secreted ? “We enact hell here
below! ”
In the epics, then, of men, and in the epic of the Supreme
Poet, there is somewhat with which the heart of man cannot
be reconciled, nor should be reconciled, since it is antithetic to
moral order and unity: when man does not abhor it, he has
forsworn his own nature. What, precisely, is this somewhat,
this Satan ever going to and fro in the world, this serpent
always lurking in garden ? Let us see whether this thing can
be accurately defined. Having learned its nature, — if, indeed,
to do so be possible, — we may further inquire whether the epic
idea of the world can be seen as comprehending, commanding
it, and evoking melody from it. And if the attempt be daring,
and our space for exposition brief, all the more must precision
be sought; nor will a little formality in the statement, if it
help toward precision, be esteemed inexcusable.
1. In the world of the senses and of science all goes by law,
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
527
the savans tell us. Granted: force has definite characters and
constant measures ; in measure and character alike it is inva
riable. All there goes by law : by what kind of law, however ?
By a law that is absolutely and everlastingly indifferent to any
thought which man derives from his spiritual being, to any
sentiment, any ideal desire or purpose of the soul. You would
have a house, wherein to enshrine the sanctities and felicities
of domestic life : what cares gravitation for your wish ? These
Romans would build a city; Michel Angelo would lift St. Pe
ter’s dome: gravitation enters into no complicity with such
desires ; inexorably, stolidly faithful to its own business, it
holds down the rock in the quarry; whoever will get a block
of it away shall sweat for it. Well, the builders outwit gravi
tation, making it help them lift the stone, and put it in place,
where the stolid tug of that force shall serve their design : it
is outwitted, that is all; not in the least has it been won into
sympathy with a human purpose. The forces of Nature, as
they do not change to approach, so cannot change to elude, the
design of man: get the wind of them, and they are captive.
Now, as the soul has, through the body, a foothold in Nature,
and commands immediately a certain amount of force, it is
enabled to take natural law by surprise, and bring it to obe
dience. But in obedience it is remote as ever, maintaining
the same impassive, unconquerable indifference to all that the
soul imagines or intends. As with gravitation, so with all
natural forces : even when serving the most vital uses, they are
infinitely far away from man’s thought of use. Oxygen rushes
into the lungs, when they create a vacuum: it is but rushing
into a vacuum. It combines with the globules of the blood to
recreate life; to further decomposition would suit it as well :
growth and decay, life and death, man’s gain or loss, pleasure
or anguish, are to it quite the same. Thus it happens that
man, as a worker in the realm of finite Nature, must always
work among and upon forces that are no less than infinitely
removed from any sympathy with his spirit. The world serves
him, but does not know him even when it serves.
2. In using these forces, man puts himself somewhat in their
power. We lift the roof, but lift it over our own heads : gravi
tation has no respect for the heads ; its business is to draw
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
downward, which it attends to assiduously, not considering
who or what is beneath; and it holds the roof in place, I
must repeat, only as it is outwitted. When the earthquake
comes, comes its opportunity ; and now men fly the houses they
have built for their security. Moreover, for purposes of use
we must set free agencies that were not active before, that we
can never be sure of our ability to control, and that, despite
their services, ever continue terrible to us. Fire, for example,
is a demon that man has conjured up. It is needful, indispen
sable ; we must take it into our houses near the cradle and the
couch, must sleep with it for housefellow, knowing all the while
that it is an untamable demon, never a whit domesticated by
its long intimacy with man. Now fire is not bad; but the burn
ing of the house, for which it is at any moment ready, were
an evil. The burning of the house, and the fall, perchance, of
the flaming roof upon those it was designed to shelter, — de
spite all the glosses of optimism, a plain man may take leave
to regard that as indubitably an evil.
Here, therefore, is an evil, yet no evil principle. There is a
gap between human ends and natural means ; and evil — physi
cal evil only as yet — is incidental to it.
3. Man is not only in this world of forces thus indifferent
to every thought of his spirit, but, as an organized creature,
he is himself composed of such forces. Yet more, they assume
in him a new and peculiar intensity, becoming sensitive, and
rounding into an Ego heated with immeasurable desire. Nev
ertheless, these forces, though as an organized nature he is
compounded of them, belong to that world which is forever
infinitely remote from the pure thought and ideal desire of his
spirit. The relation of himself as spirit to himself as organ
ized in nature is the same with the general relation of man to
force in the external world. Hunger and thirst are no less
indifferent than gravitation to all that the soul believes and
loves. Temperamental force has its own orbit, moves by its
own springs, knows only its own ends. Indispensable utilities
are exacted from it; but it transmits them, as a mail-bag does
letters, without knowing what is in them.
Thus the soul must not only work upon, it must also work
by means of, an alien material. This material, moreover, is
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
529
not passive, it is force, fiercely intent, impersuasible. Accord
ingly, the soul can accomplish nothing, it is annulled, until by
an efflux of virtue it takes possession of the field; while only
by a continuance of the same energy does it keep possession.
Even in victory and supremacy, it may not retire and sleep :
its authority is dead, its victory vanishes, in the moment that
it ceases to act and to overcome. It is a sovereign whose sub
jects are all rebels at heart, and become such in act the moment
it does not make upon them an overmastering impression.
They are rebels, not by any concerted antagonism to the regal
principle, but because they are wholly moved by an intention
of their own, which is alien and indifferent to spiritual ideas.
4. The soul, in building up its own architectures, and pre
paring its own repast, must make immaterial fire, must liberate
demons in its own organic household, and so newly imperil
itself. For the better culture and discipline of mankind, it es
tablishes Property, — an institution which rests wholly upon an
ideal basis : instantly it creates cupidity, a very terrible demon
indeed, hungry beyond measure, sometimes in its rage of appe
tite devouring entire civilizations. What a raising of chimneys,
called courts of law, there has to be! What anxious binding
of the demon with precedents, statutes, legal forms! Despite
all which, it will sometimes break bounds : and, indeed, when
is it not breaking bounds, committing trespass, doing inde
scribable mischief ?
The soul, again, builds the state, to incarnate therein, as in
a larger body, the spirit of community : at once it sets free the
love of dominion,—fire again, and a fire that makes horrible
conflagrations. The desire of power and sway is not bad ; the
debt to it of civilization is immense, immeasurable ; never was
there a great ruler or statesman whose breast did not brim
with it; and only at far-distant periods of time do the Timoleons and Washingtons appear, who possess it largely without
being possessed by it. Often has it wrought prodigiously, when
Goodness lay asleep, wrapped in sweet dreams ; and history on
many a page
“ Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
Till in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end.”
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
Nor, on the other hand, is it good; for in itself it has no moral
quality whatsoever. But a force destitute of all moral char
acter, which nevertheless must be brought into the closest
intimacy with moral interests, and even fanned and stimulated
in their behalf, has in it capacities of evil.
The soul builds churches, architectures to house a thought
higher still; and again it makes fire ; and this time may make
the very fire of hell, bigotry, conscientious hatred, holy cruelty,
lying for God, tyranny that not only oppresses, but makes in
its victims a hunger to be oppressed. And once more we have
to say, that the force thus brought into action is in itself neither
good nor evil, though of both good and evil it is vastly capable.
Fire, — it may kindle fagots about the martyr, and blaze
abroad to devastate entire centuries and civilizations, or may
genially warm the hearts and households of believing ages.
Finally, this Ego of ours, —this also is demon, is fire. The
Spirit makes it: never could mere organic force become con
scious, and say I. But the Spirit makes it as the intensest
conceivable antithesis to its own pure, including universality.
I, — what a portentous exclusion the word implies ! It shuts
out all the universe beside itself; indeed, to the egoistic appre
hension pure and simple, I is universe, is god. A wonderful
thing is this particular, limited Self. It is eccentric centre,
— pure partiality in the state, and with the sense of perfect
wholeness. It is Spirit inverted or reverted from its compre
hending, universal self-identity, to sustain its own intensest
contradiction, a purely limited and excluding self-identification.
This special Self is demon all and only. Not good, it is yet
here as the strong caryatid to sustain a spiritual conscious
ness, which is God’s surpassing work of art. Not bad, it is
nevertheless a caryatid whose head is not kept under without
pains, and that at best seldom fails to put a wry face upon his
labor.
Fire is not bad ; but the burning 'of the house, which despite
all precautions may happen, were an evil. Egoism is not bad;
but its exaction and forage upon the soul, which in some degree
are sure to happen, are an evil. When the forces of finite Na
ture turn the virtue and providence of the soul against itself,
then there is evil, devil. Devil is not a person, it is not even
�Epic Philosophy.
531
a thing or a force ; it is simply an effect incidental to a par
ticular form of relation. With finite Nature, fixed, resolute,
inexorable in its finitude, the soul must make an intimacy, to
which intimacy Nature can never respond by the faintest blush
of sympathy; natural forces will seek forever, must forever
seek, to carry away in their own line whatever comes within
their reach; and when they succeed in appropriating and
bringing into their own line of action the virtue of the soul,
evil appears. The epic poet represents this most terrible inci
dent of the Spirit’s engagement in Nature, — the soul pulled
overboard by the fish it was drawing in, — the soul caught in
the mesh of its own mechanism, ground in its own mill.
If, now, the foregoing exposition be at all correct, it will
appear, that, though there is no evil principle, though Satan
is the boldest of impersonations, implying some temerity of
rhetoric, yet the Satanic, the infernal, exists nevertheless.
Disease is no entity; but epilepsy and lockjaw are quite real.
On the other hand, the epic “ play-over ” must not be for
gotten. Evil is real, but it is not commensurate with man’s
being. Man is properly supernatural; the soul is above all its
experience within the limits of finite Nature, and
“ Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”
Accordingly, I find two opposite classes of theorists, who,
severally following, though in contrary directions, a linear and
prosaic logic, arrive at a forced conclusion on this matter. The
one party, beginning from below, and perceiving evil to be real
relatively to the soul as engaged in Nature, reasons to the
eternal from the temporal, and asserts, a supernatural Satan,
conceived of either as a person or a state of existence. The
other party, setting out from man’s supreme consciousness,
wherein he feels the serene eminence of his spirit over Nature,
reasons downward, and declares that even within the limits of
Nature evil is not real.
The latter opinion seems to have been adopted with a degree
of enthusiasm by the Emersonian school in America, though
of Mr. Emerson himself one may rather say that he has shown
a marked predilection for it than that it is sustained by him
as a fixed dogma. The chief argument for it is an undeniable
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Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
fact, namely, that evil is often reconverted to use. But were
this always the case, evil would not lose its proper character.
At sight of somewhat with which it cannot be reconciled, the
soul is stung, and newly incited. Well, why is it stung ?
Whence the provocation ? It is the sight or the experience
of somewhat odious to the soul that stings. If we say, “ This
so-called evil is made to serve a use, therefore it is not evil;
whatever is is right; the soul can and must be reconciled with
it,” — where are we ? Let us shun huddled thinking.
Asafoetida is the best of antispasmodics ; it does not there
fore smell the better. Esteem me not narrow-minded, if I hold
my nose. The philosopher tells me, indeed, that only devil
knows devil, — that only because I am cousin-german to asa
foetida does its odor offend me. Perhaps so; it may be, that,
were the nose regenerate, it would find only frankincense in
foetor. I humbly confess such grace has not been given that
organ. Be it to my shame or no, I must distinguish between
scent of heliotrope and scent of carrion-flower. I follow my
nose as my fathers did before me. Nor in truth do I propose
to be shamefaced before Philosophy in doing so. Offence is
offence, make the best of it. Evil is a thing good to esteem
bad, good to be offended at, good to keep the cork on. Like
ipecacuanha and tartar-emetic, it is useful only as it creates
nausea and is intolerantly rejected by the system.
It is said further, that Good has a vast power of assimilation,
a chemistry that nothing can wholly resist. This also is true.
As in the physical world the organific force will masticate
quartz and porphyry, gnawing away at the frozen adamant of
mountain crags with teeth harder and more capable of self
repair than those of rodents, and solving all with the alchemy
of eupeptic life, until it has given the earth flesh, has clothed
this with the garniture of field and forest, and digested this
again into animal form and motion, so the higher genius that
works in humanity to dissolve and to organize does not live
upon spoon-victual alone, but has teeth to cut platinum, a
stomach to digest poison, and an art out of pus and gangrene
to make the vigor of dancing feet and bloom of dawning beauty.
Eyes that are not sick will see this without spectacles, and
sound minds will be apt to emphasize it. But let us not say
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
533
too much, and be like cowards who betray fear by voluble affir
mation that there is no danger. Good has diamond teeth, —
and it needs them! Poor logic, to say, that, because it has this
masticating and digestive force, therefore all is food for it,
artistically prepared by some cosmic Blot, and that what seems
odious is only pepper-sauce, a sharp condiment to provoke
appetite.
In fine, the universe will not be spun out in one thread, and
turned to prose. Our nice mental machinery can do much,
but cannot do that; and this new-patented method of optimism
fails like every other. It does good work of the kind, but the
poetic truth of existence will not be caught on the smooth
turning spindle.
The opposition of good and evil is never to be explained away.
But this opposition is itself prosaic, if only in itself consid
ered. To deny it is fatal to epic truth; to remain only in it,
the captive and jail-bird of Nature, is no less fatal. Evil, and
good as merely opposed to evil, belong alike to the soul only
as standing in organic connection with finite Nature; but the
soul’s true being is not in Nature, it is in Spirit, the self-affirmed,
eternal, indivisible Import, into which Nature, as sign, ever
more resolves itself. To the bird as walking the wall exists,
and is impassable: the bird takes wing, and the wall, though
solid as ever, becomes for it no wall. But man at once walks
and flies, — walks and works on these levels of Nature, yet by
- his true substantive being soars and circles in the divine ether;
and here, in unity with the One-and-All, he is himself the sky,
which rounds in and contains in harmony his natural experi
ence. In his breast is enshrined this exceeding great mystery,
—the infinite separation of Nature from Spirit, the perfect poetic
comprehension of Nature by Spirit. A mystery, nay, a very
dust in the eyes, to prose thought, it is far otherwise in the
being' of man, as in the universe of God: here it abides in
poetic clearness forever,— so clear, that the voice of it, when it
comes to speech, can be no other than a voice of singing, to
which only melodious numbers and concord of sweet sound
afford a fit expression. The universe rings with it like a bell;
and the heart of the poet, being whole, also rings silver-clear;,
and in the deep heart of humanity a poetic thought is peren
nial, though in general it is shattered on the lips.
�534
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
From the height of its perfect consciousness the soul looks
down upon the imperfect quasi world of Nature; and seeing
itself involved there, yet not involved, — locked into those
limits of inexorable finitude, yet above them, including them, ’
resolving them into that breath of Spirit which sings while it
passes, — it has the sentiment not only of a Whole, but of an
epic Whole, including within its flawless unity the intensest
contradiction.
We are now prepared, let it be supposed, to attempt a final *
survey of this epic Whole, this Iliad of existence, placing its
grand features in their true relation to each other. Only from
the summit of thought and consciousness can such a survey be
attempted sanely; we must therefore begin and end with the
all-comprehending Unity, with pure Spirit.
1. Man has the consciousness of Spirit in its integrity,
whole and the whole, nothing if not all. He knows this, and,
as knowing, is one with it. Never can it be. known as other ■
than that by which it is known ; if another, it is no longer the
One, but only a particular existence. Tell me not of a God,
one being particularized among others, though great or great
est. John Stuart Mill kindly explains, that, though it be
ridiculous to speak of the Infinite, the Absolute, yet God may '
be infinite in a particular way, — infinitely just and good in the
sense of being entirely just and good. His infinite is merely
unmixed quality. In the same sense a spider is infinitely a |
spider, if it be all and only spider. Should the creature ever I
be afflicted with a doubt about the propriety of catching flies, |
the spiderly nature, becoming mixed, would fall from infini- I
tude. Infinite in the sense of pure quality is perhaps as good !
an infinite as positivism admits of; but I quite agree with Mr.
Mill in thinking it ridiculous to call this the infinite.
The infinite of Spirit is not to be caught in a cobweb. The
ambitious broom of positivist logic will neither sweep it down
from the dark corners of the understanding nor sweep it to
gether from the floors of phenomenal Nature. What it is we
may a little conceive thus: though there were a myriad of
perfectly rational minds, there were but one Reason, and each
of them were it. The consciousness of reason is an integrating
consciousness; in it there is a unity, not numerical, but intrinsic:
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
535
multiple in manifestation, it is not divided, nor in itself multi
ple, but ever identical. Spirit is reason, and more than we
mean by reason distinctively. It is not only integral, but is
active, eternal, absolute integration. As there is not only a
possible rest in motion, but also a rest of motion,— as, for
example, in orbital movement, — so there is a unity, not only
in multiplicity, but of multiplicity, — a unity of comprehension
and embrace, which, though it contain contradiction, yet does
indeed contain it, and therefore remains itself unbroken. The
consciousness of this it is that the human race has confessed
so often as it has said God. There is no night there; there
all limit is swallowed up, freedom and necessity become one
and the same ; there the jars of Nature blend in the tune of the
eternal Whole, and the clash of oppositions is felt to be sus
tained by the very unity which they seemingly oppose. “ The
will of Zeus is accomplished ” : it is the key-note which to
every note is a key. Spirit is; and he is Spirit who is con
scious of it, and he the voice of it who hears its language.
Spirit is, the everlasting Only, only and all, playing over op
position, yet never opposed; abiding ever in itself, yet not
aloof; dwelling only with itself, yet housing the universe.
2. Nevertheless, in precise antithesis to this, there is the
world of finite Nature, also assuming to be all, and indeed
complete in its way, — no escape from it, when once you have
accepted its level and law. It bears, however, this ear-mark
of imperfection, that the essential character of it is to be ex
cluding. Excluding : every particle of matter shoulders away
every other; — every square inch of space says, as it were, to
universal space, “ Stand off! ” — every moment of time fixes
itself between the two eternities of time, denying them, saying,
“ Of time I alone am, I, the present moment! ” — every force,
so much as it acts, negates all other force. It is a universe of
exclusions, — purest conceivable opposite to the including sim
plicity of Spirit.
What then? We have a dual world: Spirit and Nature
standing in irreconcilable opposition, each, it should seem,
excluding the very possibility of the other. Yet as Spirit is
whole and the whole, or is nothing, dualism kills it. And,
indeed, many in our day espouse the cause of finite Nature to
�536
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
this extent, saying, “ Spirit can be no more than a fiction of
speech, since for it as a reality Nature leaves no room.” True,
Nature has no room for it. Here is a difficulty, which to a
prosaic speculation is, and must remain, insuperable. But the
bolt turns to another key.
3. We have seen that this self-asserting finite Nature asserts
itself only to the same ear which itself makes, to the finite
understanding. To the higher poetic intelligence, it is only
Sign, only Language. As such, it declares itself to be in and
of itself nothing. A word, — for what is it here? To be
somewhat in itself? No, but expressly to be nothing in itself.
It is a word only as, vacating itself, pointing away from itself,
denying its own substantiality, it simply and unequivocally
stands for somewhat which indeed is, namely, an import exist
ing in the mind. The world, then, as Sign, denies its sub
stantial existence, vacates its own pretension to reality, and
affirms what is not itself, affirms a significance whose unity
and substantiality is Spirit.
It has been said, but will bear saying again, that to this
significant and therefore ever-vanishing character of Nature all
human speech is due. So all mythology, all theology, comes
of the impulse to render that language which Nature is into
the language man uses. Poetry, painting, every fine art, is a
fine art for the reason that it elects the significant impression
of Nature as the real fact of it, while the so-called useful arts
regard Nature only in its lower character, as force. Whence
the charm of landscape painting ? It is always inferior to that
which one may any day see from his doorstep. The charm of
it is this: it presents Nature as only picture, only significant
show, without its outdoor pretension to substantiality, — pre
sents Nature more as what it veritably is. Hence mere fac
simile painting, which foists upon the’picture Nature’s habitual
disguise of its true character, is but mock art.
4. Having thus affirmed Spirit, then shown finite Nature as
apparently denying it, then again shown the same Nature as
confessing itself a mere sign of that which it seems to deny,
we come to an act which concerns us human beings very
nearly, but of which there seems to be in the streets of our
cities little notice taken. I have never once seen mention of it
on the bulletin-boards, nor found it in the column of news.
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
537
Spirit issues in person, in the person, that is, of humanity,
upon this scene of finite Nature ; accepts the fiction of its sub
stantiality; and even so, upon these hard terms, extorts a con
fession of its presence and quality. Here, then, it is in the
militant state, a warrior in armor, overcoming a hostility that
never abates, compelling a confession ineffably alien to the lips
that utter it.
Spirit militant, Spirit accepting the fiction of Nature’s sub
stantiality to conquer it on its own level, — this is the moral life
of humanity. With this “ accepted fiction ” under the feet,
we cannot wonder that our life should divide itself into the
irreconcilable opposites, Right and Wrong, God and Devil.
A contradiction is involved in such a state of existence; the
t contradiction will appear, and make itself felt, sometimes to
the utter anguish of the soul.
Here the soul conquers, but always with costs; here it en
dures defeat, but in defeat still conquers, if its quality has
been signalized. No other business has it than to say effectu
ally, I am : achieving this, though in dungeons, at the stake,
on the cross, it is victorious.
Partial defeat it ever does and must suffer, optimism to the
contrary notwithstanding. “ All is well,” am I told ? Yes,
the All is very well, undoubtedly. One gets fresh intelligence
of that fact in his own breast now and then, and pipes his little
note of rejoicing accordingly. But is this taken to mean that
all goes well ? that in the line and on the level of outward
events there is perfect process ? that the moral life of man
involves no contradiction, in the midst of which the soul must
strive and suffer ? that we may lie on our oars and trust the
tide of events to take us to port? Enough, 0, more than
enough of this! In the line of events, as related to the moral
life of humanity, there is, there can be, no perfect process on
the earth: the very conception of our existence forbids. We
chant, with a sweet imbecility, “ the good time coming ” :
it is ever coming, and never come. Some say that the golden
age has been, and some that it is to be ; but I, that all events
are cheap and all times tawdry, — that only the soul is golden,
and that the shine of this metal out of the dust-cloud of history
is the true result.
vol. cvn. — no. 221.
35
�538
t
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
Here is the field of the tragic poet. He causes the soul to
show itself and to shine from out the utmost darkness and
devilishness of events. The one is helpless and inextinguish
able ; the other victorious and without honor. The soul suffers
every conceivable defeat, and is godlike still; the law of events
follows its own fatal course, making no clear distinction be
tween good and bad, and is seen in its proper under-foot char
acter. Thus, Shakespeare in his grand tragedies will give us
scarce a crumb of comfort, so far as the course of events is
concerned. Iago, indeed, ends his iniquity with his death :
who is consoled ? who cares ? You crush the snake that has
just fleshed its fang in priceless honor and innocence: well; it
was but a snake. Iago dies; but Desdemona, Othello! — who
talks of a balance struck ? Or who in this presence will pro
claim the “ good of evil ” ? What good ? Snake number two
is more likely to be regenerate ? St. Snake is somewhat less
beautiful to me than the creature uncanonized. Anything, if
you please, but Satan in a state of grace!
I thank Shakespeare that he gives no hint of these suspi
cious compensations. Out of wrong done and suffered the
soul has shown its quality: this is the true result. All the
grandeur of the great poet’s genius is found in this, his habit
ual manner of representing life. Had he stooped to patch up
events, pretending, after the fashion of the novelist, that the
significance of life is found in their course and result, he would
have stooped indeed, and been no longer Shakespeare.
Spirit by issuing upon this scene of things brings moral good
to a world which before was but a system of forces, incapable
of moral character: by the same act it makes the possibility
and the general (not particular) necessity of moral evil. It
does so by placing the virtue of the soul within reach of the
energies of the finite world, “ laws ” of Nature, organic im
pulses and desires, — huge polypi, that throw their long tena
cious tentacles about all that comes within their scope, and know
not what they devour. Thus the Hebrew “ God of battles ” —
the unity of Spirit in the militant state — says, “ I, God, make
good, and I create evil.” Does this sound harsh ? But is it
not true ? Are not moral good and moral evil correlative op
posites, each of which forever wars upon and forever implies
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy^
539
the other ? Does not the soul make both, the former by its
intrinsic quality, and the latter by the situation it accepts ?
As the human providence which evokes the element of fire
makes it possible that any house may burn and certain that
some houses will burn, so spiritual virtue, by creating moral
good, enables the characterless energies of Nature to attain the
higher, though abhorrent quality of evil.
But the divining sense of humanity has touched the ultimate
truth of this situation with a precision yet more admirable.
Spirit militant, appearing no longer as the “ God of battles,”
but as the suffering Prince of Peace, the crucified God, meekly
enduring, in the consciousness of an infinite resource, all the
utmost despite of Nature, — never yet has a nobler or truer
imagination inspired the worship of humanity. A great in
justice is, indeed, done this perennial poetic truth, when it is
Calvinized into prose ; yet what an appeal, even so, has it
made to the heart of man! Let the form change as it may
and must; but let the grand imagination remain, for the trage
dy of the world has this extent; and JEschylus and Shake
speare and every greatest poet has touched it most nearly just
then when his genius was at the supreme height.
The strictly moral consciousness is dualistic, not integrating;
for beneath its feet is an assumption contradictory to the eter
nal quality of Spirit, namely, the assumed substantiality of
finite Nature. Hence it dwells in a divided world, whose ulti
mate terms a^e God (the warring or suffering God) and Devil.
But optimism pretends that the moral consciousness is unitive
and entire. It blinks the underlying contradiction, and .there
fore must seek to persuade us that “ the Devil is not so black
as he is painted,” and indeed is not of a black complexion at
all, but is only a serviceable angel in soiled linen, — grimed
with necessary labor, and none the worse for not appearing in
holiday clothes. I freely make over my share in this charita
ble judgment to those who can find a use for it, and freely
confess that^a more limping, one-legged thing is not known to
us than a purely moralistic theology which sets out with deny
ing the necessary dualism of morals.
5. But the old religionists permitted themselves to speak of
mere morality, as if there were a consciousness in man and a
�540
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
truth in being that transcended morals, though without invali
dating them. Were they utterly deceived ? Has humanity no
consciousness, has being no character of this transcendent
kind ? Are right and wrong the supreme words ? — wrong,
however, being inscrutably wrung back, and so brought, as it
were clandestinely, into the line of right. Epic imagination,
whether as found in written poems, or as speaking in all the
higher spirituality of mankind, affirms a sovereign Unity, which,
indeed, becomes moral by descent into the limits of finite Na
ture, but which is in itself, as Hooker said, “ not only one, but
very oneness,” while in oneness it includes, and is, all. Let it
be permitted me to speak as I can, and without reproach, of this
Unspeakable, happy if the words shall in any manner or degree
hint what the best of words will never more than hint.
It may be read in epics, and as their supreme import, neces
sary to render them epical, that Spirit, even while provisionally
accepting this finite Nature as substantial, and issuing upon it
in the militant character, remains not the less and forever in
itself, in the consciousness of its pure, eternal integrity, un
broken by the dividedness of time, untouched by its tumult.
This One to which there is no Other, while yet it does not ex
clude, but embraces and houses all multiplicity and diversity,
— is it not the “ open secret,” always inaccessible to the criti
cal understanding, while to the adoring heart and spiritual
imagination it is not only accessible, but is alone to them in
the deepest sense native ? Inexplicable, indubitable, not to be
solved only because itself the universal solvent, it is the mys
tery of eternity, yet is mysterious only to the prosaic mind,
while only through its infinite reconciling presence is finite Na
ture itself other than an affronting mystery to the credent and
poetic soul. This is the blessed play-over, beneath which, and
yet within which, all the fortune of life, all the struggle and
process of existence, go on, and into which they evermore
vanish, to appear in vanishing and to die in renewal, as words
sink and are lost in the import that creates and sustains them.
An indestructible consciousness in man, fundamental fact of
his being, makes him a participant in this oneness, this whole
ness, this perfection of Spirit in itself. Spirit as engaged in
Nature, —it is Sarpedon, son of Zeus, warring, stricken, perish
�1868.]
Epic Philosophy.
541
ing, lying gory on the battle-field ; Spirit abiding in itself, —
it is Zeus poised in Olympian peace, and in himself containing
all. Sarpedon falling, dying, the victim of Nature ; Zeus im
mortal, hurtless as the blue heaven, and embracing Nature as
the sky the earth; — the one is the passionate experience of
man, and the other is his pure, integrating consciousness. But
the latter is his consciousness, not merely as his, and subjec
tive, but as veritable, substantial, the indivisible consciousness
of Spirit, existing only because Spirit is, one and indivisible,
— the eternal fact impressing itself with the sense of its own
infinite reality.
It follows from all the foregoing that man’s being is a scale
of three degrees. On the lowest, he is only an organized
nature, a mote or molecule in the immeasurable system of
things ; a little learning the trick of it, a little and a little
better able, from age to age, to take care of his small peculium; getting to be at length, from a mote, an insect, and
humming so as to be heard, 0, yards away!
On the de
gree above this, far above, he is moral, engaged in the battle
without truce between good and evil; at issue with others and
with himself ; finding a law in his members warring upon the
law of his mind and bringing him into captivity, till he cry,
“ Wretched man that I am ! ” Here he may have noble battle,
but never peace ; always there is a Hannibal in his Italy, or
the Gauls are gathering on the border ; and he is still bound
by the necessities of the conflict in the rare hours of his tri
umphal march. On the highest degree, he is one with the
One-and-All. Here, as from the height of eternity, he looks
down on his small fortunes in the world of time, and by all that
he there suffers renews and intensifies the consciousness of his
eternal security and sovereignty in God.
It was the door into this supreme consciousness that the
Christian evangel, particularly as represented .by Paul, un
barred and threw open to the access of mankind; the doc
trine of “ salvation by faith,” though its dryness now parches
the tongue, began the epopee of Christendom, and gave the
key-note to the largest symphony in which the imaginations
of nations and ages have as yet joined. This consciousness,
though not at all denying, but, on the contrary, admitting and
�542
Epic Philosophy.
[Oct.
using, what is beneath it, declares itself alone veritable.
Spirit only is ; all else appears, and is not. And here one can
not help asking by what fine luck it was that Hellenic tradition
made Homer blind; that which he sang he saw but as a
picture within his breast. For so the eye of absolute Spirit
sees Nature and the natural experience of man as things by
itself imagined, airy nothings with a local habitation and a
name.
The epic poet sets off all the worst that the soul can suffer
in Nature against that higher impossibility of its suffering at
all. He gives himself the divine pleasure of beholding this
troubled, tumultuous quasi existence as it vanishes momentarily
and forever into the peace and perfect comprehension of Spirit
in itself. That engagement in Nature, and yet an everlasting
ease and delight of self-rescue out of Nature, — the perpetual
play-up of finite life out of itself and into the infinite as its
truer self, while Spirit in its divine play-over stoops to the
world, and, stooping, remains infinitely above, and seeming tu
acknowledge another than itself, makes that apparent other an
instrument through which to blow its eternal affirmation, I
only am ; — this is that symphony of being whose choirs are
solar and stellar systems, and whose notes and numbers are in
dividual lives, while in each note the tune of the whole, the
tune of eternity, presides, and the Symphonist himself is pres
ent. And in finding this, we find the epic interpretation of
human life.
D. A. Wasson.
�
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Epic philosophy
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Wasson, David Atwood
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Place of publication: Boston
Collation: 501-542 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Article from North American Review, vol. CVII, no. 221. Annotations in pencil "N. Amer. Rev." page 501. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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1868
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Poetry
Mythology
Classics
Ancient Greek Poetry
Epic Poetry
Homer
Mythology
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THE
BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH,
AND ITS SURVIVAL IN
FOLK-LORE, LEGEND, AND DOGMA.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON,
FEBRUARY, 1875.
BY
EDWARD CLODD, F.R.A.S.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Threepence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY- C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE BULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, W.
�THE
BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH,
AND ITS
SURVIVAL IN FOLK-LORE, LEGEND, AND
DOGMA.
HE birth-place of myth is in. man’s endeavour to
interpret the meaning of his surroundings. He
has adapted much, but created nothing. The rudest of
his race built the fabric of his fancy out of pre-existing
materials which earth and sky supplied, and for the
greater works of imagination with which the poet and
the painter have enriched ns, they have drawn upon
those materials and upon that experience of nature and
life which has come down from the past as an intel
lectual inheritance. Whether it be the origin of a
universe or the rhythmic setting of a great product of
the human mind, the maxim—ex nihilo nihil fit—holds
good through all space and time.
Man, in his first outlook on Nature, altogether igno
rant of the character of the forces by which he was
environed, ignorant of the unaltering relation between
cause .and effect—a relation which it needed the expe
rience of ages and the generalisations therefrom to
enable him to apprehend—regarded every moving thing
as impelled by a force akin to that which impelled him,
and differing only in degree. The only force of which
he. was conscious was what we call the force of wifi.
His own voluntary movements were governed by his
will; and so he argued that everything else. which
moved did so because it' was ’Endowed with will-force
and directed -by it. A personal life and will was there
fore attributed to sun, moon, clouds, river, waterfall,
ocean, and tree, and the varying phenomena of the sky
at dawn or noonday, at grey eve or black-clouded yight,
was the product of the controlling life that dwelt in a .
JL
�4
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
In a thousand different forms this conception was
expressed. The clouds were cows with swelling udders
to be milked by the winds of heaven; the thunder was
the roar of a mighty beast; the lightning a serpent
darting at its prey, an angry eye flashing, the storm
demon’s outshot forked tongue ; the rainbow a thirsty
monster; the waterspout a long-tailed dragon. This
was not imagery, but an explanation. Primitive man
did not embody his concepts in pretty conceits, but
meant exactly what he said. ‘ A thing is said to be
explained when it is classified with other things with
which we are already acquainted. We explain the
origin, progress, and ending of a thunder-storm when we
classify the phenomena presented by it along with other
more familiar phenomena of vaporisation and condensa
tion. But the primitive man explained the same thing
to his own satisfaction when he had classified it along
with the well-known phenomena of human volition,’ by '
constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by
the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer, who releases
the treasures of light and rain which the monster had
stolen.
The myth-making stage in human progress finds an
analogy ready to hand in the child’s nature. To him not
only are all living creatures endowed with human intel
ligence, but everything is alive. He beats the chair
against which he has knocked his head, and afterwards
kisses it in token of renewed friendship • in his Kosmos
wooden soldiers and wooden horses are actuated by the
same sort of personal will as nursemaids and kittens.
Even among full-grown civilised Europeans, as Mr.
Grote remarks, “ The force of momentary passion will
often suffice to supersede the acquired habit, and even
an intelligent man may be impelled in a moment of
agonising pain to kick or beat the lifeless object from
which he has suffered.” Mr. Tylor tells us that “the
wild native of Brazil would bite the stone he stumbled
over, or the arrow that wounded him. Such a mental
condition may be traced along the course of history, not
merely in impulsive habit, but in formally enacted law.
�Survival in Folk-Lore3 Legend, and Dogma. ■ $
The rude Kukis of Southern Asia were very scrupulous
in carrying out their simple law of vengeance, life for
life; if a tiger killed a Kuki, his family were in disgrace
till they had retaliated by killing and eating this tiger
or another; but, further, if a man was killed by a fall
from a tree, his relations would take their revenge by
cutting the tree down, and scattering it in chips. A
modern king of Cochin-China, when one of his ships
sailed badly, used to put it in the pillory as he would
any other criminal.” Mr. Grote adds “ that a court of
justice was held at the Prytaneum, in Athens, to try
any inanimate object, such as an axe or a piece ot
wood or stone, which had caused the death of any one
without proved human agency, and this wood or stone,
if condemned, was in solemn form cast beyond the
border. The spirit of this remarkable procedure re
appears in the old English law (repealed in the present
reign), whereby not only a beast that kills a man, but a
cart-wheel that runs over him, or a tree that falls on him
and kills him, is deodand, or given to God, i.e., forfeited
and sold for the poor.” ('Primitive Culture,’ I., 259).
Among ancient legal proceedings in France we read of
animals condemned to the gallows for the crime of
murder, and of swarms of caterpillars which infested
certain districts being admonished to take themselves
off within a given number of days on pain of being
declared accursed and excommunicated 1
The wide-spread attribution of life and consequent
personification of all things, which has just received
illustration, is further seen in the attribution of sexual
qualities which survives, frequently in most perplexing
form, in gender. In some simple and early languages
there are but two genders, masculine and feminine, the
classification of certain things as neutrius generis “of
neither gender,” being of later origin. An inquiry into
the origin of myths throws light upon the practice of
attributing sex to lifeless objects, the personification of
anything being followed by division into gender accord*
ing to certain distinctive qualities, the major and inde
pendent being classed as male, the minor and dependent
�6
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
as female. Our language has happily got rid of the
false distinctions which encumber some ancient and
modern languages, and for the most part attributes sex
only to living beings, while in' German, for example, a
spoon is masculine, a fork is feminine, and a knife is
neuter, the mention of which, by way of illustration, in
dicates what an interesting field of inquiry into the par
ticular causes which have determined the attribution of
masculine gender to certain lifeless objects and of femi
nine gender to others, lies open to the student of the
subject.
Were further illustration needed of the material source
from whence all expression has come, we find it in our
abstract terms, every one of which had originally a con
crete meaning, “ its present use being the result of a
figurative transfer founded on the recognition of an
analogy between a physical and a mental act or product.
For example, ‘ abstract ’ is ‘ drawn off, dragged away
‘ concrete ’ is ‘ grown together,’ comported into something
‘ substantial,’ as we say, that is, something that ‘ stands
beneath.’ ‘ Apprehend ’ signifies literally ‘ to lay hold
of,’ and we still use it in that sense, as when we say that
the officer ‘ apprehends ’ the felon ; to ‘ possess ’ is ‘ to
sit by, to beset.’ When we employ the phrase, ‘ I pro
pose to discuss an important subject,’ we use words
signifying originally something apprehensible by thesenses. To ‘ propose ’ is ‘ to set in front ’ of us; to
‘discuss’ is ‘to shake to pieces ;’ a ‘ subject’ is a thing
‘ thrown under,’ something brought under our notice ;
‘ important ’ means ‘ carrying within ’—that is, having a
content, not empty or valueless.”—(See Prof. Whitney’s
‘ Lectures,’ p. 112.)
Happily abundant evidence is at hand to establish the
main position advanced as to the origines of myth.
There are savage tribes still in the myth-making stage
of human development, whose present condition repre
sents that out of which the higher races have emerged,
and the relation of whose mythology to that of those
races it is needful to determine.
As a proof of the personification of the phenomena of
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 7
nature, let us take the dark patches on the face of the
moon.
In the Samoan Islands these are said to be a woman,
a child, and a mallet. A woman was once hammering*
out paper-cloth, and seeing the moon rise, looking like
a great bread-fruit, she asked it to come down, and let
her child eat a piece of it. Hut the moon was very
angry at the idea of being eaten, and gobbled up woman,,
child, and mallet; and there they are to this day. In
Ceylon, it is said that when Buddha was wandering
hungry in the forest a pious hare offered itself to him to
be killed and eaten, whereupon that holy man set it on
high in the moon that all men might see it, and marvel
at its self-sacrifice and piety. The Selish Indians of
North-Western America say that the little wolf was in
love with the toad, and pursued her one moonlight night
till, as a last chance, she made a desperate spring on to
the face of the moon, and there she is still.
Comparing these with familiar myths upon the same
object, we have our own “ Man in the Moon,” who was
put up there for picking sticks on a Sunday; the Ger
man version, which places him there, with a woman,
for the crime of churning butter on Sunday; the Ice
landic myth, in which the two children familiar to us,
as Jack and Jill, have been kidnapped by the moon, and
carried up to her, where they stand to this day with the
bucket on the pole across their shoulders, falling away,
one after the other, as the moon wanes—a phase em
balmed in the couplet—
“ Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after. ”
Take again the stars, to which personal life and action
is attributed in savage mythology. The natives of Aus
tralia say the stars in Orion’s belt and scabbard are
young men dancing a corroboree; the Esquimaux speak
of the stars in Orion’s belt as seal-hunters who missed
their way home ; the Kasirs of Bengal declare that the
stars were once men—they climbed to the top of a tree
(of course, the great heaven-tree of so many myths, of
the Jack and Beanstalk genus), but others below cut
�8
B'he Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
the trunk and left them up there in the branches.
According to the ancient Aryan, they are the offspring
of the first man, Tama, giving light from heaven to
men below; and hence the superstitious peasant of our
own land, for a reason he cannot tell, will teach his
children that it is wicked to point at the stars. The
names given to our constellations, and the grave belief
of men like Origen and Kepler that the stars are
animated, show what kindred explanations races in very
different states of development give of similar pheno
mena. Along the line, too, wherever earthquakes are
felt, there are myths of an animal underneath the earth.
The Hindu notion of a great tortoise beneath the earth,
which is thus kept from falling, at once occurs to us.
That myth is developed there in many forms, but we are
now more concerned with its form among barbarous
races. In Celebes we hear of the world-supporting hog,
who rubs himself against a tree, and thereby shakes the
earth. The Caribs say that when there is an earth
quake Mother Earth is dancing; the Thascalons that
the tired world-supporting gods cause it by shifting
their burden to a new relay ; the Kamchadals tell of the
earthquake-god who sledges below ground, and whose
dog causes the earthquake when he shakes off fleas or
snow; the Japanese think that earthquakes are caused
by the huge whales creeping underground, having been
probably led to this idea by finding the fossil bones,
which seem to them the remains of subterranean
monsters. Erom all this a short step leads us to the
popular belief which, in ancient times, connected the
eruptions of 2Etna and Stromboli with the infernal
regions, and credited the fiends below with the accom
panying noises. I must not dwell any longer upon
these nature-myths, which it is obvious are capable of
very expanded comparison; but perhaps enough has.
been said to show that the mythology of the lower races
gives us a basis for studying nature-myths in their
historical development among higher races, and affords
very strong evidence in favour of the thesis advanced
at starting—namely, that the birth-place of.myth is in
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
9
man’s endeavour to interpret the meaning of his sur
roundings.
The larger number of investigators in the field of what
is known as comparative mythology are of this opinion;
but it is to be borne in mind that there are limits
thereto, and it is to be regretted that some of our com
parative mythologists have committed themselves to a
theory which refers all the myths, both in outline and
detail, of one great section of the human family, to the
sun and dawn, basing such theory on the results of a
comparison between classic and Vedic myths, to which
I shall have occasion presently to refer.
Upon this theory not only are all Aryan myths in the
last resort to be adequately explained by reference to the
phenomena just named, but the great epic poems which
sprang into existence in the ages which followed the
dispersion of the tribes, and which exhibit an identical
framework, are explained in like manner. Without at
all abating what has been said in support of the nature
origin of myth, one may adhere to the general principle
while rejecting its universal application, and it does
seem hard to admit that the Trojan war is but the story
of the contest waged in the East to recover the treasures
of which the powers of darkness have robbed the day
in the West; that Helen is the dawn, and Achilles a
solar figment; that the heroes of the Volsungs and
King Arthur and his Table Knights are but sunbeams
and shadows ; and that many of them have not “ clus
tered round some historic basis.” Upon this solar theory
of myths Mr. Tylor appositely remarks :—“ The close
and deep analogies between the life of nature and the
life of man have been for ages dwelt upon by poets and
philosophers, who in simile or in argument have told of
light and darkness, of calm and tempest, of birth,
growth, change, decay, dissolution, renewal. But no
one-sided interpretation can be permitted to absorb into
a single theory such endless many-sided correspondences
as these. Rash inferences which, on the strength of
mere resemblance, derive episodes of myth from episodes
of nature, .must be regarded with utter mistrust, for the
�io
'The Birth and Growth of My th, and its
student who has no more stringent criterion than this
for his myths of sun and sky and dawn, will find them
wherever it pleases him to seek them. Should he, for
instance, demand as his property the nursery ‘ Song of
Sixpence,’ his claim would be easily established:
obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the fourand-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the
underlying earth covered with the overarching sky;
how.true a touch of nature it is that when the pie is
opened, -i.e., when day breaks, the birds begin to sing,
the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is
pouring out the sunshine ; the Queen is the Moon, and
her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the
rosy-fingered Dawn who rises before the Sun, her master,
and hangs out the clouds—his clothes—across the sky;
the particular blackbird who so tragically ends the
tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of sunrise.”
I will now pass from this good-humoured banter
against the extreme application of a sound principle, to
the evidence of a common mythology among the IndoEuropean peoples before their separation. Most of those
present are doubtless aware that the languages spoken
in Europe by the Celts, Teutons, Slaves, Greeks and
Romans ; and in Asia, by the Hindus, Persians, and
some lesser peoples; are all proved to be descendants
of a single mother-tongue, known as the Aryan, or, as
better defining the races included thereunder, the IndoEuropean. From this fact, the inference that these
peoples are blood-relations is beyond all question,
although physical causes, such as climate, food, and
intermixture with inferior races, have in the long course
of time brought about certain marked divergences.
Language, the instrument which has been applied
with such signal success in revealing this common ori
gin of the Aryan nations, has also brought to light
the fact that before the several tribes dispersed in slow
succession, some westwards towards Europe, and the
rest, at later intervals, southwards through the passes
of the Hindu-Kush mountains into Hindustan, they had
a common religion, the observance of whose rites had
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma. 11
not become the usurped functions of a priestly caste, and
a common mythology, closely linked to that religion,
which survives among European nations in departing
beliefs and in legends which have been promoted into
history, or mingled with it; in nursery tales, proverbs,
superstitions, and all their kith and kin, so that the
Hindu mother amuses her child with fairy tales which
often correspond, even in minor incidents, with stories
in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells
them in words which are phonetically akin to words in
Swedish and Gaelic.
The key which unlocked these interesting facts is the
Sanskrit language, for, as in the history of the IndoEuropean languages, it served as the starting-point,
because, although related to them not as ancestor, but as
elder member of the same family, it has, more than any
other member, preserved traces of the common parent
from which they sprang, so in the history of IndoEuropean mythology it is in the ancient Vedic texts
written in Sanskrit, and especially the Rig-Veda, that
we find the materials for a comparative study, since
therein are preserved the first, fresh meaning of Aryan
myth. The investigation itself was prompted by the
absence of any satisfactory canon of interpretation of
the Greek myths. They had been degraded into dull
chronicle by the method of Euhemeros, which made
Herakles a vulgar thief, carrying off a crop of oranges
guarded by mastiffs, and Jove smiting the giants a king
repressing sedition; they had been credited by Lord
Bacon with an allegorical meaning which was precisely
what the fancy of the expositor chose to make it, but
which was at least an advance upon the coarse and
revolting stories of which the Greeks regarded them as
the vehicle. It did not seem likely that a people who
have made the world more beautiful for all of us, whose
works of art are alike the delight and unrealised ideal of
our sculptors, and from whose wise ones the wise of our
day gladly learn, had deliberately cultivated a mass of
repulsive myths, degrading to their framers and accep
tors ; and no small credit is due to those comparative
�12
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
mythologists who have recovered that hidden and purer
meaning enshrined in classic myth, and which throws
light upon the intellectual condition under which it was
born.
This work was accomplished by comparing a large
number of the Greek names of gods and heroes, whose
meaning is obscure, with names allied to those in San
skrit whose meaning is clear, the relationship between
the two, hidden as it is by the substitution of one sound
for another, which extends to all the Indo-European
languages, being explained by the law which governs such
changes, or “ permutations of consonants,” and known
as “ Grimm’s law.” In many cases the Sanskrit words
were found to be common names for the sun, the sky,
the dawn, and so on, the words in each case having plain
physical meanings. As an illustration of the method
and its successful application, let us take the familiar
myth explaining the birth of Athene. She is said to be
the daughter of Zeus, and to have sprung from his brain
or forehead. Now the Greek Zeus, like the Latin Deus,
is the Sanskrit Dyaus, which means the bright sky, or
Heaven—Dyaus-pitar being the same as Zeupater, and
Lat. Jupiter. Athene is probably the Sanskrit Ahand,
which is one of the many Vedic names for the dawn.
Thus the meaning of the Greek myth is obvious. The
dawn springs from the forehead of the sky : the day
break appears rising from the East. But to the Greek,
in whose language this physical meaning was lost, Zeus
did not mean the bright sky, but the greatest of the
Olympian deities, father of gods and men. Such a result
might be naturally expected when the Aryan communi
ties became more widely severed, the personal elements
in each myth undergoing great changes accounted for by
geographical reasons, changes which caused the divine
of one mythology to be the demoniacal’ of another,
which gave to the myths of the North their rugged
grandeur, and to the myths of the South their stately
grace.
The theory that the similarity between Aryan myths
is caused by one nation having borrowed or adopted
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
13
those of another is not tenable, unless there was an inter
course between them after their separation far more
active than history warrants ; and we shall presently see
that the argument between the stories of India and
Scandinavia makes it incredible that there has been any
borrowing, and, still less, any independent fabrication,
while there is just that unlikeness in certain detail which
might be expected from the different geographical posi
tions of the two nations, explaining how impossible it
was that the elephant, the giant ape and gigantic turtle,
which occur so frequently in the Brahmanic mythology,
should find a place in the mythical legends of Northern
Europe.
There is one class of myth which affords interesting
evidence of descent from a common source, and of
survival in an unlooked-for form.
All the Aryan nations, and some other nations which
have had intercourse with them, have, among their
legends, the story of a battle between a hero and a
monster, in each case the hero becoming victor, and
releasing treasures, or in some way rendering help to
man. In Hindu myth this battle is fought between
Indra and the dragon Vritra; in Persian between
Rustem and a huge wild ass ; in Roman between Hercules
and the three-headed monster Cacus; in Greek, among
other like tales, between Apollo and the snake Python ;
in Norse between Thor and Midgard and between
Sigurd and Pafnir; in Jewish between Satan and God;,
in Christian between St. George and the Dragon.
To explain these, it is needful to turn for a moment to
the civilization of the Aryan tribes. The efforts of that
people were mainly directed to increasing the numbers
of their herds and flocks. (The identification of these
with wealth is familiar to us in the word “pecuniary,
which is derived from Latin “ pecus,” cattle). The cow
yielded milk for the Aryan and his household ; her dung
fertilised the soil; her young multiplied the wealth of
the family at an ever-increasing rate, and she naturally
became the symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity, and
ultimately an object of veneration; while for the functions
�14
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
which the bull performed he was the type of strength.
The Aryan’s enemy was he who stole or injured the
cattle ; the Aryan’s friend was he who saved them from
the robber’s clutch.
That personification of phenomena to which reference
has been made already being brought into play, the great
heaven was to the Aryan a vast plain over which roamed
animals of as varied a kind as the ever-shifting clouds
indicated, the two most prominent animal figures in the
mythical heaven being the cow and bull. The sun, giver
of light, most welcome blessing, was the bull of majesty
and strength; the white clouds were cows from whose
full udders dropped the milk of heaven for the support
of the children of earth, the blessed rain.
But there were dark clouds also, and these were the
dwelling-place of the monster who conceals the herds of
cattle, and withholds from earth both light and rain.
Chiefest among the exploits of Indra in his battle
with Vritra, the thief, serpent, wolf, wild boar (as he is
variously called in the Rig-Veda), and his crushing
defeat of that enemy, through which he releases the im
prisoned cows ; the hidden treasures bursting forth from
the sky as the monster dies, killed by the darts of
Indra.
This myth, of course, depicts that battle between light
and darkness which is probably the most striking phe
nomenon in nature, and, in addition to its existence in
this form, it is the main source of the endless tales of
lovely ladies in durance vile, from which the chivalry
and bravery of knights releases them ; as is the wintry
sleep of nature the parent of myths of spell-bound
maidens and of heroes in repose.
Passing by any analysis of the myths of light and
darkness among the Western Aryans, since they would
yield the same results as that furnished by the Vedic
myth, we have to note what a marvellous change has
converted this myth of Indra and Vritra into a religion
and a philosophy. Amid the conflicting powers of
nature and the analogy presented to them by the cease-
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
15
less warfare between good and evil, there was deve
loped in the Persian religion that dualism which has so
mightily influenced for evil the beliefs which flourish
among us to-day. The demon Vritra becomes the arch
fiend Ahriman, who struggles with Ormuzd, not like
Indra, for the rescue of cattle, but for the citadel of
Mansoul, the dominion over the universe. Ahriman
mars the earth which Ormuzd has made. He quenches
its light, keeps back the rain from its thirsty soil, and is
the author of evil thought, evil words, and evil deeds.
Like his physical ancestor, Vritra, he is represented as
a serpent, and his name is the “ Spirit of Darkness.”
It was with this dualism that the Jews came into asso
ciation during their memorable exile in Babylon. There
is no evidence that previous to their captivity they
possessed the conception of a Devil as the author of all
evil. In the earlier books of their Old Testament
Jehovah is represented as dispensing with his own
hand good and evil, and the notion of an arch-demon
occurs only in those books composed after the close con
tact of the Semitic Jew with the Aryan Persian. The
Jewish mind was ripe to receive this belief, because it
was already familiar with the notion of a being who
was a minister of God, and whose office it seems to have
been to act as a sort of detective or public accuser, as
well as seducer. This would cause him to be regarded
as an object of dread, and at last to be credited with the
authorship of evil, and hence the Persian Ahriman found
a place in Jewish theology as the being familiar to us as
the Devil; and his hierarchy of spirits as the swarm of
demons upon whom every evil was charged. With
goat-like body, horns and cloven hoofs borrowed from
the sylvan god Pan ; with red beard and pitchfork bor
rowed from the Norse god Thor ; with person black and
sooty as befitted his abode, we might smile at this Devil
decked in the dress of different climes and ages, if the
conception of him as stupid, gullible, and lame, which
obtained in the Middle Ages was the only conception.
But the legends of his pristine purity, of his failure to
grasp supreme power, of his expulsion from heaven with
�16
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
liberty to thenceforth torment mankind ; the ascription
of all physical and moral evil to him and his agents ;
the gross materialism which incarnated millions of
demons, and credited them with sway over the elements
of nature and the bodies -and souls of men, giving rise
to that belief in witchcraft through which it is com
puted nine millions of so-called witches were burned
during its existence; these repress the smile, for they
have rested as a blighting curse upon the world, and are
not yet bereft of all power to harm. But the world is
waking from this hideous nightmare, which, like the
Trolls of Norse mythology who burst at sunrise, will
altogether disappear uuder the full light of the know
ledge of our time.
In view of the few minutes remaining at disposal, I
must now proceed by way of illustration, which, in this
matter, is argument and evidence as well, to show that
certain stories long accepted as veritable history have
their source in legends common to many peoples. .
Every one is familiar with the story of William Tell;
how, in the year 1307, Gessler sat a hat on a pole as the
symbol of Imperial power, and ordered every one who
passed by to do obeisance towards it, and how a moun
taineer named Tell, who hated Gessler and the tyranny
which the symbol expressed, passed by without salutingit.
Reputed to be an expert archer, he was ordered, by way
of punishment, to shoot an apple off the head of his own
son, and obeyed. The apple was placed on the boy’s
head, Tell bent his bow, the arrow sped, and both apple
and arrow fell together to the ground. Gessler noticed
that Tell, before shooting, had stuck a second arrow in
his belt, and asked the reason. “It was for you,” replied
Tell; “ had I shot my child, it would have pierced your
heart.” The silence of contemporary historians concern
ing this tale of skill and bravery caused doubt to be
thrown upon it in the sixteenth century ; but so strong
was popular belief in the event, confirmed as it was by
evidences of a kind quite conclusive to people both before
and since, namely, the lime-tree in the market-place at
Altdorf to which Tell’s boy was bound, and the crossbow
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
17
itself preserved in Zurich arsenal, that one daring sceptic
is said to have been condemned to be burnt for doubting
the truth of the story, contending that it was of Danish
origin. But the sceptic was right, for the old Danish
historian, Saxo Grammaticus, tells of a certain Palnatoki,
who, for some time among Harold’s body-guard, had
made his bravery odious to many of his comrades by his
continual boasting. Talking one day with them when
in his cups, he bragged that he could hit the smallest
apple placed a long way off a wand at the first shot,
which boast came to the hearing of the King, who com
manded that, instead of a wand, the head of Palnatoki’s
own son should have the apple placed upon it, and that,
failing to hit at the first flight of the arrow, Palnatoki
should lose his head. “ Yet,” says the old chronicler,
“did not his sterling courage, though caught in the
snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of
heart; he warned the boy urgently, when he took his
stand, to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with
calm ears and unbent head, lest he might defeat the
practised skill of the bowman.” At the first shot the
apple was pierced, and when Palnatoki was asked by
the King why he had taken more arrows from the quiver,
he made answer, “ That I might avenge on the swerving
of the first, lest, perchance, my innocence might have
been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free.”
Saxo gives this as occuring in the year 950. But the
story appears not only in Denmark, but in England,
Norway, Finland, Russia, Persia, and Dr. Dasent says
that a legend of the wild Samoyedes, who never heard
of Tell, or saw a book in their lives, relate it, chapter
and verse, of one of their marksmen.
And in all these stories we find an unerring archer
who, at some tyrant’s bidding, shoots from the head of
some dear one a small object, and who provides himself
with a second arrow, the purpose of which is to kill the
tyrant if the archer’s son be shot.
Whether Tell be, as Max Muller suggests, the last
reflection of the Sun-god, be he called Indra, or Apollo,
or Ulysses, who, with unerring light-shaft, or arrow of
�18
,1
‘The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
lightning, hit the apple or any other point, and destroy
their enemies with the same bow, matters not; we must,
I think, ask the writers who wish to point their sentences
with an historic reference, not to speak of Switzerland in
future as “ the land of Tell.”
The same ruthless iconoclasm must sweep away that
image of the faithful brute Gellert, whose sad fate in the
story has dimmed many an eye; how, after killing the
wolf which would have devoured Llewellyn’s child, the
prince came home, and finding the cradle upset and the
dog’s mouth blood-smeared, slew the faithful fellow
before he could see from what a death the dog had saved
his boy. Although to this day the tourist is shown the
dog’s grave at Beth-Gellert, the truth must out that the
story occurs in the folk-lore of nearly every Aryan
people. It exists in Russia and Germany ; it was popu'lar among the mediaeval monks; it occurs in Persia,
India, and among non-Aryan races, as the Egyptians
and Chinese.
In the Egyptian story a Wali once smashed a pot full
of herbs which a cook had prepared. The angry cook
thrashed the offender within an inch of his life, and
when he afterwards came to look at the broken pot, he
found among the herbs a poisonous snake.
In the Panchatantra, a Hindu collection of fables
made many centuries ago, the story takes this form :—
An infirm child is left by its mother while she goes to
fetch water, and she charges the father, who is a Brah
man, to watch over it. But he leaves to collect alms,
1 and soon after a snake crawls towards the child. In the
house was an ichneumon, a creature often cherished as a
family friend, who sprang at the snake and killed it.
When the mother came back, the ichneumon went
gladly to meet her, his jaws and face smeared with
blood. The poor mother, thinking it had killed her
child, threw the water-jug at it and killed it; then
seeing her child safe, and the body of the venomous
snake torn to pieces, she beat her breast and face with
grief, and scolded her husband for leaving the house.
The class of stories of which the foregoing are a type, is
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
19
not likely to have arisen spontaneously in each land.
Tales of bravery and faithfulness have, happily, every
where a residuum of fact, but it does not usually extend
to likeness in minute detail, and they are not to be con
fused with inferences which, cast into forms of myth and
tradition, are drawn from wide-spread facts suggesting
to the mind of man a common explanation. For example,
the discovery of huge bones may give rise to a belief
in an age of giants; the tradition of a diminutive race,
as of the Lapps, in Europe, to a belief in dwarfs; cer
tain marks on the solid rock to myths of footprints of
the gods; the finding of bones of mammoths at some
depth below the surface to the myth of a huge burrow
ing creature that lives underground; the observation
of marine shells on very high mountains to legends of a
great Deluge; but no such reasoning can apply to the
myths of Tell and Gellert. Of course, further research
will show that many of our popular tales are neither
survivals of legends common to the undivided Aryan
tribes nor indigenous products, but foreign importations
conveyed into Europe by the pilgrims, students, mer
chants, and warriors who travelled from West to East
and East to West in the Middle Ages ; but the applica
tion of the comparative method gives the clue to the
source of each. It is no small gain that the science of
comparative mythology has rescued the folk-lore, popu
lar legends, and nursery tales of many lands from the
neglect which was fast consigning them to oblivion, and
discovered in them a valuable aid to our knowledge of
the past. The collection of stories which are now
accessible, and which have been taken down from the
lips of narrators in the Highlands and the Dekhan, in
Iceland and Ceylon, in South Africa and New Zealand,
in Japan and Serbia, are not only interesting in them
selves as products of the story-tellers’ art, but valuable
in the materials which they furnish for comparison and
classification. They indicate composition out of but few
materials originally : their variations being the result of
admixtures of local colouring, historical fact, popular
belief and superstition, all largely affected by the skill of
�20
The Birth and Growth of Myth, and its
the professional story-teller. Under many disguises the
same fairy prince or princess, the same wicked magician
and clever Boots peeps through, disclosing the near
relationship of Hindu nursery tales to the familiar tales
of our childhood.
As illustration let us take the familiar story of Cin
derella, for the original of which we travel to the East,
finding it in that most venerable sacred book of the
Brahmans, the Rig-Veda.
Cinderella is the aurora, the swift one without feet; as
the first of those who appear every day in the eastern
sky, as the first to know the break of day, the aurora is
naturally represented as one of the swiftest among those
who are the guests of the sun-prince (Mitra) during the
night; and, like her cows, which do not cover them
selves with dust, she, in her onward flight, leaves no
footsteps behind her. The word used (“ apad,” wtfhcmt
feet} may, indeed, mean not only she who has no feet,
but also she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as it
appears, lost them ; for the Prince Mitra, while following
the beautiful young girl, finds a slipper, which shows
her footless, the measure of her foot,—a foot so small that
nootherwoman has a foot like it,—and th us we have herein
the point round which the interest of the well-known
story gathers. It is, as is clear, a myth of the sun
chasing the dawn, and just as Cinderella is brilliant and
beautiful only while in the ball-room, so the dawn is rosy
only when the sun is near. (Cf. ‘ Angelo de Gubernati’s
Zool. Myth.,’ I., 31).
In the charming Hindu fairy tales collected by Miss
Frere, under the title of ‘ Old Deccan Days,’ the story is
told of a Rajah who gave his only daughter a pair of
slippers made of gold and jewels. She always wore
them when walking, and one day, while picking wild
flowers on a mountain-side, one of the slippers fell off
and was lost in the jungle below. Not long after it was
found by a prince when hunting, and taken home by him
to, his mother, who urged him to seek for the woman to
whose foot it belonged, that he might wed her. Then
they sent to every town in the kingdom, but in vain;
�Survival in Folk-Lore, Legend, and Dogma.
21
at last, hearing through travellers of a princess who had
lost a jewelled slipper, the prince set off for the court of
her parents to take the missing treasure, and ask for the
princess as his wife, to which both she and her parents
consented. The rest of the story is beautifully touching,
but I cannot dwell further upon it. The same incidents
of search, discovery, and marriage occur in the German
version, ‘ Aschenputtel,’ the Serbian story of 1 Papalluga,’
and others; while in the Greek it is the slipper of Rhodbpis,
which an eagle steals while she is bathing. Flying
with it to Memphis, the bird drops it into the lap of the
Egyptian king as he sits on his seat of judgment, with,
of course, the same result—search after, discovery, and
marriage of its owner.
The same marked correspondences are exhibited in
the wide-spread tale of Beauty and the Beast. In its
Greek form of Psyche and Love ; its German form, 11 the
Soaring Lark its Norse form, “ East of the Sun and
West of the Moon;” its Gaelic form, the “ Daughter of
the Skiesit is a bear, or lion, or dog, or loathly
monster of some kind, who, being under the spell of a
sorceress, is a splendid man at night, but has to resume
his hideous form by day, and who will vanish from his
bride if the light fall upon him. “ In the Panchatantra
there is the story of a king who asked his pet monkey
to watch over him while he was asleep. A bee settled
on the royal head, the monkey could not drive her away,
so he took his sword, killed the bee, but in killing her
killed the king.” A similar parable is put into the mouth
of Buddha ; while in the fables of Phsedros a bold man
gives himself a severe blow on the face in trying to kill
a gnat. In Dasent’s ‘ Tales from the Norse,’ a man saw
a goody hard at work banging her husband across the
head with a beetle, and over his head she had drawn a
shirt without any slit for the neck. 1 Why, goody,’ he
asked, ‘ will yon beat your husband to death ? ’ ‘ No,’
she said, ‘ I only must have a hole in this shirt for
his neck to come through.’
These illustrations of correspondence could be multi
plied indefinitely, while a mere list of stories common to
�22
The Birth and Growth of My th, and its
the different branches of the Aryan stock, and which
are older than the dispersion of the Aryan race, would
easily transform this lecture into a catalogue occupying
some time in detailing.
With the exception of allusion to the change effected
in Jewish theology by the importation therein of the
Persian Ahriman, no reference has been made to the
myths of the Semitic family. The complicated mythology
of the Aryan races is absent from the Semitic, which
may be explained, in a large degree, by the permanence
of the radical elements in Semitic words. For example,
whereas in the Aryan, the Sans. “ Dyaus ” appears in
Greek, not as “Zeus” “the sky,” but as the “god”
Zeus, in the Semitic no such alteration would occur. It
had a name for the sky and the dawn, but these names
were so distinctly felt as appellatives, that they did not
become proper names for the gods. There is, however,
none the less a large body of Semitic myth awaiting
that scientific criticism which has been applied with
such signal success to Aryan myth, and when the re
straint imposed by artificial notions concerning the
exceptional character of the writings embodied in the
Old Testament are removed, the mythology of the Jews
and of kindred races will contribute its share of evidence
in support of the similar conditions under which it
is held that myth has its birth and growth. Already
the identity of some Semitic myths with Aryan myths is
apparent, such as those relating to the Creation, the
Deluge, the building of Babel, the passage of the Red
Sea, the translation of Elijah, and the stories of Abraham
and Isaac, of Joseph, and of Job; while Delilah has
her representatives in Hindu and Horse legends; the
strength of Samson challenges comparison with that of
Hercules ; and the story of Jonah’s fish is related to a
group of legends with which the Greek myth of Herakles
and Hesione, and the nursery tales of Tom Thumb swal
lowed by the cow, and Little Red Riding Hood by the wolf,
are intimately associated. As a concluding illustration,
the originals of the familiar “house that Jack built,”
and of the “ old woman who couldn’t get her pig over
�Survival in Folk-Lore^ Legend^ and Dogma.
23
the stile,” appear to exist in a poem regarded by some
Jews as a parable concerning the past and future of the
Holy Land. It begins, “ A kid, a kid, my father bought
for two pieces of money;” and it goes on to tell how a
cat came and ate the kid, and a dog came and bit the
cat, and so on to the end. “ Then came the Holy One,
blessed be He! and slew the angel of death, who slew the
butcher, who killed the ox, that drank the water, that
quenched the fire, that burnt the stick, that beat the
dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father
bought for two pieces of money, a kid, a kid.” This
composition is in the “ Septer Haggadah,” and is
printed at the end of the Jews’ book of Passover ser
vices in Hebrew and English. (See ‘Halliwell’s Nur
sery Rhymes,’ pp. 112-17;’ ‘ Tylor’s Prim. Cult.’ I. 78.)
I am very conscious how inadequate the treatment of
this important subject has been ; but I hope that enough
has been said to indicate its importance in its intimate
relation to our present intellectual condition. Of its
survival in custom, traditional phrases, forgotten ety
mology of familiar words, occult sciences, &c., I have
had no time to speak, and all that must now be said by
way of final word is that Mythology, so far as it has
been investigated, points to conclusions concerning man’s
primitive state identical with those indicated by pre
historic Archaeology—namely, that the savage races of
to-day represent, not the degradation to which it is
asserted man has sunk, but the condition out of which
all races above the savage have emerged.
The advocates of the development-theory do not over
look tbe fact that civilization has been checked occa
sionally and locally, for both hemispheres witness to
that; neither do they forget that knowledge has been
here and there used as an instrument hurtful to culture,
nor that civilization intensifies vice as well as virtue;
but these do not militate against the general result—a
progress in which, marked as it is to-day, none of us see,
or, if healthily constituted, desire to see, finality.
FEINTED BY C. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The birth and growth of myth, and its survival in folk-lore, legend and dogma.
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Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday afternoon, 14th February, 1875. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London.
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Thomas Scott
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1875
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CT126
CT2
N157
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Mythology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The birth and growth of myth, and its survival in folk-lore, legend and dogma.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Dogma
Folklore
Legends
Mythology
NSS