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Egypt
and the
Pre-Homeric Greeks.
OMER has been called by a very late Greek poet of the Antho
logy, ‘ the second sun of the life of Hellas.’ In the warm light
of his poem a world of men is alive, a world that we know from no
Other source. The sunshine of Homer breaks for a moment through
the darkness of time, and the Achaeans and Danaans, when that light
is withdrawn, fade back again into the obscurity that shrouded them
before, like Children of the Mist. Of their history and of the de
velopment of their civilisation before the Homeric age, we have no
authentic account, and of what befell them when the epics fail us, up
to the moment when Greek literary records begin, we learn but vaguely
from legend and tradition. Yet it is plain that a people so essentially
civilised as the people amidst whom Homer sung, must have had a
long training in experience of life, and in the knowledge of foreign
culture. On the nature of that training and that early history, it has
for some time been believed that light was cast by the Egyptian
monuments. Within the last year, however, the ‘ History of Egypt,’
by Dr. Brugsch, has been published and translated into English.
The aim of some chapters in that learned work is to destroy the idea
that the prehistoric Greeks had any connection with Egypt. The
present article will be devoted to a consideration of the arguments
for and against the opinions that the ancestors of Homer’s Greeks
were well acquainted with the empire on the Nile. It may be as
well, in the first place, to sketch a picture of what that empire was
like, in the distant years when the Achaeans and Danaans did not yet
possess their sacred poet.
When we read Homer, we find ourselves in the morning of the
world. Society has not yet fixed, by hard and fast limits, the special
duties and conditions of human existence. The division of labour is
still all but unknown. The king of one island may become the thrall,
the swineherd, in another. The leader in war is a carpenter, a ship
wright, a mason in time of peace. The merchant is a pirate on
occasion, and the pirate a merchant. Each day brings variety and
adventure to men who are ready for every vicissitude, and who still
find in all experience, in war, storm, and shipwreck, in voyage of
discovery, in the marvels of great towns, and in the peril of enchanted
islands, something delightfully fresh and strange. The Homeric
Greeks, in spite of the orderliness of their public and domestic life,
are still like children, easily moved to wonder, easily adapting them
selves to every change of fortune, and only impatient of dull drill, and
of routine.
With Homer’s men, we live in a young world ; but on their very
border, and within their knowledge, there existed a world already
H
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeri$ Greeks.
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old, rich, artificial, and the slave of habit. The island of Crete was a
part of heroic Greece; it owned Agamemnon as its over-lord, and
from Crete he drew some of his bravest warriors. Within five days’
sail of the island (if a ship had a fair nortll wind in her sails), were
the mouths of ‘ the River of Egypt,’ and the i most fruitful fields of
the Egyptian men ’ (Odyssey, xiv. 257). In Egypt, when Homer
sung, civilisation had passed its noon, and was declining to its even
ing. Thus in 4 Hundred-gated Thebes, where lies the greatest store
of wealth in the houses’ (Iliad, ix. 381 ; Odyssey, iv. 127), were
already found the extremes of wealth and poverty, and the fixed
divisions of society. Already the day-long and life-long labour which
the Greeks detested deformed the bodies of the artisans.
The weaver, within his four walls, is more wretched than a woman; his
knees are fitted to the height of his heart, he never breathes the free air.
.... The armourer has great toil and labour when he carries his wares
into far-off countries. A heavy price he must pay for his beasts of burden
when he sets out on his journey, and scarce has he returned to his home
when again he must depart............ Every worker in metals fares more
hardly than the delvers in the fields. His fields are the wood he works on,
his tools the metal wherewith he toils. In the night, when he should be
free, he is labouring still, after all that his hands have wrought during the
day. Yes, through the night he toils by the light of the burning torches.
.... Thus all arts and trades are toilsome; but do thou, my son, love
letters and cleave to them. Letters alone are no vain word in this world;
he who betakes himself to them is honoured by all men, even from his
childhood. He it is that goes forth on embassies and that knows not
poverty.—(Maspero, ‘ Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient,’p. 127. Translation
of Egyptian epistle.)
What a modern picture this is ! How unlike anything that Homer
has to draw, though he, too, pities the toil of the woman who lives by
her loom, and of the woman grinding at the millI The letter from
which this sketch of Egyptian life is quoted was written by a certain
scribe under the Nineteenth Dynasty, some fourteen hundred years
before the birth of Christ. It was written, probably, at the very time
when the children of Israel were suffering from cruel taskmasters,
who 4 made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and brick,
and all manner of service in the field ; all their service, wherein they
made them serve, was with rigour.’ To that Egypt, where the
Hebrews were bond-slaves, the ancestors of Homer’s Greeks may have
come as pirates, or as hostile settlers, and may have remained as
mercenary soldiers, or as labourers. Thus when Odysseus tells a
feigned tale about his adventures in Egypt, he declares that he
invaded the country, that his men were defeated, ‘and some the
Egyptians slew, and some they led away alive, to toil for them
perforce’ (Odyssey, xiv. 272). The monuments of an age much
earlier than that of Homer, of an age between the dates of Joseph
and of the Exodus, have been generally interpreted in the same sense
as the story of Odysseus. They have been supposed to prove that,
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Egypt and tke Pre-Homeric Greeks.'
173
while the Israelites were yet in Egypt, or had but recently left it, the
prehistoric Greeks fought there, were defeated, and became the
mercenaries of the Pharaohs. There can scarcely be a more inte
resting or romantic moment in history than this was, if the usual
reading of the monuments is correct. The early Greeks are learning
a sense of their own national unity, and are gaining their first sight
of an advanced civilisation, on the same soil as that where the
Hebrews learned the same lessons. The romantic interest of this
theory must not, however, lead us to neglect the arguments urged
against it by Dr. Brugsch. Let us examine, then, the foreign re
lations of Egypt at this period, and the evidence as to Homer’s know
ledge of one of the peoples who have bequeathed to us our art, our
politics, science, philosophy, and our religion.
The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt
bore sway, widely speaking, during the centuries which passed between
1700 B.C. and 1100 B.C. In these ages the Egyptian empire reached
the summit, of her wealth and power. Her arms were carried victoriously northward, into Asia Minor, southwards down the Nile
valley, and the Arabian Gulf, and across the ‘ great sea ’ to Cyprus.
On the walls of her temples may still be seen the painted procession
of captive or tributary races. These races are mentioned by names
which it is not always possible to attach, with certainty, to known
peoples, but the pictures themselves often afford the clearest evidence
as to types of race. The Egyptians, broadly speaking, knew four
races. These were the black men, negroes, whose type is unchanged;
the hook-nosed Semitic peoples, whose features survive in the Jews ;
the Egyptians themselves, painted in a conventional victorious red,
and lastly, the white non-Asiatic races of northern Africa, and of
the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. It was chiefly with
the thick-lipped and curly-haired blacks of the interior, or with the
Phoenicians and other Semitic races, that the Egyptians of the
sixteenth century before Christ had to do. From the Hittites of the
Orontes valley and other Asiatic tribes, conquered in the great battle
of Megiddo, Thothmes III. took as tribute all those marvels of Sidonian art that Homer is never weary of extolling. The representations
of the gold and silver vases on the monuments prove that Homer did
not exaggerate the merit of the Phoenician craftsmen. Thothmes III.
boasts how he took ‘many golden dishes, and a large jug with a
double handle, a Phoenician work.’ He also acquired ‘ chairs with
the foot-stools to them of ivory and cedar wood ’ (Brugsch, i. 327).
We are reminded of Homer’s description of the chair which Icmalius
£ wrought with ivory and silver, and joined thereto a footstool that
was part of the chair itself’ (Odyssey, xix. 57). The horses,of the
Asiatic enemy also fell into the hands of Thothmes with the goldenstudded chariots which had been framed in the isle of Cyprus, ‘ the
land of the Asebi,’ the very country where Homer places his most
skilful artificers. It was thus that the Pharaohs dealt with their
Semitic enemies, while from the negroes they took, as tribute,
,
, <,
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
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leopards and apes, incense and fragrant woods, and slaves, and tusks
of ivory.
Such were the relations of the Egyptians with two out of the four
races into which they divided the dwellers in the world. From the
white-skinned peoples of Northern Africa, and from their allies, also
white, who came from the isles and coasts of the great sea, Egypt
took little by way of tribute. They rather came to seek her; it was
not she who wished to attack them. As early as the reign of Thothmes III., the victor over the Asiatics at Megiddo, the monuments
speak of the Tamahu, the ‘people of the North,’ and of the ‘ tribes of
the islands.’ Among these the most conspicuous at first were called
Tahennu, the ‘ white men ’ of Northern Africa. Early in the reign
of Ramses II. (about 1450 B.c.) the monarch boasts of conquests over
‘ the barbarians of the north, and the Libyans, and the warriors of the
great sea’ (Chabas, ‘ Etudes,’p. 184). It is among these ‘warriors
of the great sea’ that we seem to recognise those indubitably
powerful Mediterranean peoples, the ruins of whose vast Cyclopean
cities, built before the dawn of history, crown many an isolated rocky
height, and command many a harbour and creek, on the shores of
Greece, Italy, and the islands. These warriors, in short, were in all
probability the ancestors of Homer’s more than half-mythical heroes.
For more than two centuries Egypt was exposed to the attacks
and invasions of these northern peoples. Her wealth, her rich soil,
her soft climate, and the beginnings of her decrepitude, attracted the
maritime tribes, and the races of the Lybian mainland. As we read
the accounts of these invasions in the inscriptions, we are irresistibly
reminded of the similar excursions of the Northmen ‘ on viking.’ The
very language of the monuments reads like the language of the
English chroniclers who went in fear of Danish pirates. The first
recorded inroad on a large scale by the confederated forces of Libya
and the maritime powers was made in the time of Ramses II. This
king began his reign by an exploit which brought him into collision,
according to some authorities, with the tribes which later succoured
Ilion. In the battle of Kadesh he checked the power of the Kbita
or Hittites, with their allies, the Leku, the Dardani, the warriors of
Carchemish, ‘ all the peoples from the extremest end of the sea, to
the land of the Khita.’ In the Khita some authorities see the other
wise mysterious Keteians who were led to fight for Troy by Eurypylus
the son of Telephus (Odyssey, xi. 519). In the Dardani they remark
the familiar Dardanians of Homer, and in the ‘ Leku ’ the no less
familiar Lycians. Dr. Brugsch, the determined opponent of views so
easy and so pleasing, is not content with these identifications. He
thinks that the Leku are not the Lycians, but a much less powerful
and important tribe, ‘the Legyes mentioned by Herodotus as a
people of Asia Minor’ (Herodotus, vii. 72). Now the Greeks
called all the wide-spread Ligurians of the north Mediterranean coast
‘ Legyes,’ so it is not easy to see why, if ‘ Leku ’ is ‘ Legyes,’ the
allies of the Khita may not have come from Trieste or from the
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
175
shores under the Maritime Alps. The Dardanians again are not, so Dr.
Brugsch holds, the Dardanians with whom we are all familiar, but a
sept named once by Herodotus (i. 189). Yet even the Dardanians of.
Herodotus were next neighbours of the Paphlagonians, who, in their
turn, are numbered by Homer among the allies of Priam. Thus, even
on the showing of Dr. Brugsch, the Asiatic enemies of Agamemnon,
and the Asiatic enemies of Ramses II. drew their allies from the same
districts. But why should we look for an obscure sept of Dardani
on the Tigris, people only casually alluded to by Herodotus, writing a
thousand years later ? We might as plausibly identify the Dardani
who fought against Ramses II. with the Dardani who, according
to Strabo, lived in dens excavated under dunghills in Illyria, but
possessed an unaffected taste for music.
When he attacked the Leku, Khita, and Dardani, Ramses II. was
aided by some foreign mercenaries, called the Shardana 4 of the sea.’
These men are called 4 the King’s prisoners,’ and it is probable that
they had first been made captives in some war with North Africa, and
afterwards trained to bear arms with the native Egyptian soldiery.
The name of the Shardana, with that of other maritime peoples, was
soon to be terrible to the Egyptians. The reign of Ramses II. lasted
very long—no less than sixty-eight years—and it is possible that the
government of Egypt shared the weakness of the king’s old age.
-However that may be, Ramses II. had not long lain within his
Strangely humble tomb when the Libyans, with the peoples of the
Mediterranean, invaded the empire. The story of the invasion is
told by reliefs and inscriptions on the walls of a little court to the
south of the precinct of the chief temple at Carnac. The inscriptions
are described by Champoilion, who partly deciphered them (1828),
but did not identify the names of the races mentioned as hostile to
Egypt. As read by the late Vicomte de Rouge, and (with occasional
variations) by M. Chabas and Dr. Brugsch, they describe the war
between the Libyan king and his allies on the one part, and Meneptah,
son of Ramses II. (the Pharaoh of Exodus), on the other. The names
of the allied powers are thus written by Dr. Brugsch: 4 The A-qaua-sha, the Tulisha, or Turisha, the Liku, the Shair-dan, the Shaka-li-sha, peoples of the north which came hither out of all countries.’
{Brugsch, ii. 116.) The Vicomte de Rouge spelled the names,
4 Akaiusa, Tuir’sa, Leku, Shairdina, S4akalesha.’ (4 Memoire sur les
Attaques,’ etc., p. 11.) Both authorities agree that the Rebu (Li
byans) and Mashuasha (Maxyes, an African people who, in Herod
otus’ time, claimed Trojan ancestry) were among the invaders. All
authorities agree in saying that these allies had for months pitched
hostile camps in Egypt, did violence, 4 plundered, loved death, and
hated life.’ In this inscription (translated also by Dr. Birch,4 Records
of the Past,’ vol. iv. p. 36), one seems to hear Hildas grumbling
•about the Saxons, or the English chroniclers denouncing the Danish
pirates. Though Meneptah refused (on the pretence of a warning
vision) to lead his troops into action, the charioteers of Egypt utterly
No. 596 (no. CXV». N. s.)
N
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
[August
routed the confederate hosts. Of the Libyans there fell over six
thousand men, of the Shakalsha more than two hundred, many of the
Shardana, whose kinsmen fought against them in the ranks of Egypt,
and many of the Aqaiusha. The bloody trophies of victory, frag
ments and hands of the mutilated dead, were counted over before the
king.
The all-important question must now be asked, who were these
maritime nations, these enemies of Egypt ? The spelling of their
names by various interpreters does not vary so much, but that a ready
answer rises to the lips. When the Vicomte de Rouge published his
celebrated 4 Memoire ’ in 1866, he identified, as most people would be
prone to do, the Aqaiusha with the Achaeans, who, in Homer’s time,
were the chief race in Greece. In the Shakalusha he saw the Sicilians,
whom Homer frequently alludes to as slave merchants, and therefore,
probably, as pirates. The Shardana were taken for the Sardinians
and the Tuirsha for the Tyrrhenians or Etrurians ; these famous sea
farers, an identification favoured by the spelling of the Tyrsenian, or
Tyrrhenian name in Oscan inscriptions. Even if these natural sugges
tions are adopted, it does not follow that the Tyrrhenian, Sardinian,
Sicilian, and other tribes had as yet established themselves in Etruria,
Sardinia, and Sicily. De Rouge’s system was adopted by Maspero,
Chabas, Lenormant, and (provisionally) by Dr. Birch. It has been
disturbed by the theory of Dr. Brugsch (‘ History of Egypt,’ vol. ii.p. 124). According to Dr. Brugseh, the invaders were 4 Colchio-Cretan
tribes.’ They came from the distant Caucasus, and from Crete, where,
as Homer tells us, dwelt Achaeans, native Cretans, Cydonians, Dorians,
and Pelasgians. (Odyssey, xix. 175.) Dr. Brugsch, however, says
little about the Cretans among the invaders. It is from the spurs of
the Caucasus and the coasts of the Black Sea that he brings the allies
of the Libyans. Let us examine his reasons.
Dr. Brugsch’s system is based, partly on a point of Egyptian verbal
scholarship, in which no one agrees with him ; secondly, on ethnolo
gical conjecture. He interprets the inscriptions about the Egyptian
victory to mean that the dead Aqaiusha and Shakalsha, whose hands
were cut off and brought to Meneptah, were circumcised men. No
other translator, neither Dr. Birch, nor M. Chabas, nor De Rouge (and
their combined opinion is of immense weight) has understood the in
scription in this sense. Dr.Brugsch holds that theLibyans were despised
by the Egyptians as an uncircumcised race, while the circumcised
Aqaiusha and Shakalsha were comparatively respected. He argues
that ‘to identify circumcised tribes, as some have done, with the
Achaeans, Sicilians, Sardinians, &c., is to introduce a serious error
into the primitive history of the classical nations.’ Here, then, is the
negative argument; the Aqaiusha conformed to the Egyptian and the
Jewish rite, therefore, they were not the Achaeans of Greece. Here
two obvious answers suggest themselves; first, the translation on which
Dr. Brugsch reposes is not, as yet, accepted by other scholars ; second,
we have no means of knowing whether the prehistoric ancestors of
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
177
the Greeks did or did not practise a rite which is widely spread, espe
cially among savage races. We only know that, in the age of
Herodotus, a thousand years after this period, no tradition that the
Greeks had ever practised the rite seems to have survived. It is per
fectly possible that races with the Hellenic instinct for refinement at
one time conformed to, but later, and long before the time of Herodotus,
abandoned a custom which, in origin, seems essentially savage. In pre
cisely the same way, the Phoenicians gave up this trait of manners
when theybecame acquainted with the Greeks (Herodotus, ii. 104), and
many Polynesian peoples are abandoning it in our own time. Again,
it must be noted that Dr. Brugsch declares the Mashuasha (Maxyes)
to have conformed to the Egyptian manners in this respect. Now,
Herodotus, on whose evidence Dr. Brugsch elsewhere relies, omits to
L
.mention the Maxyes in his catalogue of circumcised races, while, in
his account of the Maxyes, he says nothing about circumcision. Did
Dr. Brugsch assume that the Maxyes conformed to the rite, because
he found that their hands were cut off, after a battle, like the hands
of the Aqaiusha ? Singularly enough, the mutilation of a hand is the
punishment now inflicted in Socotra, on persons who are not circum
cised. Many other arguments derived from the practice of Polynesian
race» might here be adduced. It is enough to say that, even if Dr.
Brugsch’s translation is accepted, the authentic history of manners
permits us to suppose that the Achaeans of the thirteenth century
before our era may have conformed to the descriptions of the Aqaiusha
in the Egyptian texts, as translated by Dr. Brugsch.
The learned German is dissatisfied with the old identification. What
reasons lead him to put forward his new theory ? At a first glance,
■ it does seem very unlikely that the tribes of4 remotest Caucasus,’ that
‘ wall of the world’s end,’ as the Greeks thought it, should ally them
selves with Libya, and invade Egypt. No Greek tradition or legend
p
speaks of such an alliance, while Greek legendary history starts from
a. supposed constant intercourse between Libya, Egypt, Sardinia,
Sicily, and Greece. Herodotus however assures us, that, whether the
Caucasian tribes came to Egypt or not, the Egyptians went to the
Caucasus. This expedition was made, he says, under Sesostris, that
is, Ramses II., the monarch on whose death the Caucasians (teste
t
Brugsch) in their turn invaded Egypt I This was a singular turning
of the. tables. Herodotus thinks that the Colchian tribes learned
K,
Egyptian manners from the soldiers of Ramses II. Is it probable
that the practice became at once so general that they could send a
circumcised army to invade the realms of the son of Ramses ? Here,
at least, is the argument of Dr. Brugsch ; the maritime invaders of
-Egypt conformed to the Egyptian rite, therefore, they were not the
ancestors of the famous Achaeans. But the tribes of the Caucasus
(a thousand years later), practised the rite, therefore it is proper to
look among them for the invaders of Egypt. Yet even Dr. Brugsch
has to come down to much later times for his facts. He wishes to
find, among the Colchian and Caucasian mountaineers, names of tribes
m
2
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
[Augus!
that correspond to the names of invaders on the monuments, and
these names he finds, more than a thousand years later, in the pages
of Strabo, a writer of the time of Augustus. As Dr. Brugsch goes
to the Caucasus, and to Colchis, to find the invaders of Egypt, it
may be as well to. quote Herodotus’s account of the Colchians, and
of their apparent ethnological connections with the Egyptians.
Thereafter he (Sesostris, Ramses II.) went all through the continent,
even till he crossed out of Asia into Europe, where he overcame the
Scythians and the Thracians. So far, and no further, methinks, came the
Egyptian host, for in the land of these peoples are the memorial pillars set,
and still to be seen, but beyond these they are no longer to be found.
Thence he turned about, and went back, and when he came to the Phasis
river, I have thereafter no clear story to tell, as to whether the King
Sesostris himself sundered a portion of his army, and planted them there,
or whether certain of the soldiers, being weary of wandering, chose to
abide there about the River Phasis. For the Colchians seem to be of
Egyptian race, and this I say as one that noted it myself, before I heard it
from others. But when the thing came into my mind I made inquiry of
both peoples, and the Colchians remember the Egyptians better than the
Egyptians remember the Colchians. The Egyptians said they reckoned the
Colchians to be in the host of Sesostris, but I guessed at the matter by this,
that both Egyptians and Colchians are dark-skinned and curly haired, And
this proves nothing, for other men so far resemble them; but by this I
was more led to my guess, namely, that the Colchians, Aegyptians, and
Aethiopians, and they alone, have always from the beginning practised
circumcision.................. Come, now, I will mention other Colchian matters,
to show how like they are to the Egyptians. They and the Egyptians are
the only peoples that weave linen (in the same way), and all their manner
of life, and the tongue they speak, resemble each other. And Colchian linen
the Greeks call Sardonikon, but that which comes from Egypt they call
Egyptian. (Herodotus, ii. 1*03, 104.)
So far Herodotus goes, and by aid of his evidence Dr. Brugseh
recognises his circumcised Shardana in the Colchian makers of Sardonian linen (Xlvov 'ZapSovticov'). The Tursha of the sea, Brugsch calls
people from Mount Taurus, but it appears that philological reasoning
(‘ if anyone is inclined to trust that,’ as Herodotus would say) strongly
favours De Rouge’s identification of the Tuirsha with the Tyrseni,
or Etruscans. The Leku, or Luku, as we have already seen, Dr.
Brugsch believes to be, not Lycians, but Legyes. The Aqaiusha
are Achaeans with Dr. Brugsch, as well as with De Rouge and Chabas,
but then they are not the Achaeans of Greece or Crete, but the
Achaeans of the Caucasus. This interesting tribe (the ancestors of
the gallant Lazi ’) are mentioned by Strabo, some thirteen hundred
years after their appearance on the monuments. According to
•Strabo, the Achaeans of the Caucasus were not unlike the m od ern
buccaneers of Batoum. In his time, they dwelt near the rugged
•and harbourless coasts of the Black Sea. They lived somewhat inland,
in the forests and glens, in which they dragged up the canoes
(capable of holding about twenty-five men each), in which they made
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tEgypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
179
buccaneering expeditions. When an expedition was over, they re
turned to their fastnesses, and drank, and feasted till all was spent.
It is in the ancestors of these semi-savage neighbours of the degraded
‘ lice-eaters,’ that Dr. Brugsch recognises the allies of Libya, the men
who shook the empire of Egypt. Few other students will be inclined to
overlook the claims of the Achaean race, which was certainly, within
four centuries, so powerful in the Levant, in favour of a remote and
obscure set of savages, without history, traditions, or architectural
remains. The remains of Mycenae, Orchomenos, and scores of other
towns, attest the prehistoric homes of the dwellers in Greek coasts
and isles. The legends of Libya, Sardinia, Sicily, Egypt, and Greece,
as' Pausanias shows, are all in undesigned coincidence with the
Egyptian monuments, as read by De Rouge and Chabas. The con
tents of the oldest graves in Greek and in Sardinian soil, speak to a
prehistoric intercourse with Egypt. The very sculptures on the
sepulchral sieZae, found in the Acropolis of Mycenae, are most easily
explained as rude and debased imitations of the familiar Egyptian
group, in which the king fights from his chariot. In face of all this
tangible evidence which connects prehistoric Greece with Egypt,
it seems superfluous to seek for casual similarities of name among the
obscure tribes of the remote Caucasus.
The next mention of the people of the Mediterranean coasts and
islands is found in the monument of Ramses III. (1200—1166 B.C.)
On the walls of Medinet Habou in Western Thebes are depicted the
chief events in the history of an invasion of Egypt, in the eighth
year of Ramses. The inscriptions declare that ‘ the people quivered
with desire of battle in all their limbs, they came up leaping from
their coasts and islands, and spread themselves all at once over the
lands.’ (Brugsch, vol. ii. p. 147.) They were moved by the irresistible
attraction of the south, by the force that draws the Slavonic races
towards India and the Mediterranean, the force that led the North
men to Byzantium and the Goths to Rome. 4 It came to pass,’ says
another inscription, ‘ that the people of the northern regions, who
reside in their islands and on their coasts, shuddered [with eagerness
for battle] in their bodies. They entered into the lakes of the
mouths of the Nile. Their nostrils snuffed up the wind, their desire
was to breathe a soft air.’ (Brugsch, vol. ii. p. 149.) From the
reliefs and inscriptions we learn that the invasion was attempted
both by land and sea. Some of the Northerners landed on the coast
of Canaan, defeated the Khita, the people of Kadi (Galilee), and
of Karchemish, and so advanced on Egypt. Others sailed round to
the mouths of the Nile. By the rapidity of his movements Ramses
III. discomfited the double attack. In the reliefs of Medinet
Habou, we see the king distributing arms, we accompany the army
on the march, and behold the destruction of the islanders and men of
the Mediterranean coasts. A fourth picture represents the return
march of the Egyptians to encounter the hostile navy, and the fifth
shows us the earliest extant view of a naval battle. Ramses had
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
[August
formed a cordon of ships and boats to protect the great water-gate of
Egypt. ‘ A defence was built on the water, like a strong wall, of
ships of war, of merchantmen, of boats and skiffs. They (who had
reached the boundary of my country never more reaped harvest. . . .
Their ships and all their possessions lay strewn on the mirror of the
waters.’ (Brugsch, vol. ii. p. 148.)
Who were the islanders and coastmen who thus failed to make
good their enterprise ? The inscriptions give their names, the basreliefs present pictures of their ships, costumes, and weapons. First
let us examine the names. They are read thus by Dr. Brugsch:
‘ Their home was in the land of the Purosatha, the Zakkar, the
Shalkalsha, the Daanau, and the Uashuash.’ (‘The Tuirsha of the
sea,’ Brugsch’s Taurians, and the Tyrrhenians of De Rouge, were
also engaged.) For Purosatha, M. Chabas, with almost all other
scholars, reads Pelesta, vaguely identified with Pelasgians, or Phi
listines. For Zakkar, it is usual to read Tekkri, or Tekkariu, sup
posed to be the classical Teucri. There is a general agreement as to the
spelling of Shakalsha or Shalkulsha, Taanau or Daanau, and Uas
huash, though not about the peoples mentioned under these names.
Now here the method of Dr. Brugsch is well worth attending to ; it is
so extraordinary as to be almost incredible. He protests that the
Shakalsha are not Sicilians, but the people of Zagylis (vol. ii. p.
124). Now what was Zagylis? It was ‘a village in the time of
the Romans.’ There ‘ the last remnant of the Shakalsha still re
mained.’ Obviously this tells us nothing. The Shakalsha are the
people of Zagylis, and the people of Zagylis (some fourteen hundred
years later), are—the remnant of the Shakalsha! Take another
example: the Shardana are ‘ the Chartani,’ and the Chartani are-—
the remains of the Shardana. Here, however, we have at least
some clue as to who the, Shardana were: they were not the Sardi
nians, but Colchians, linen-manufacturing people, inferred to exist
from the term ‘Sardonian linen,’ in Herodotus. Let us try the
Daanau; these are the classic Danai, or the Daunians, according to
other students. Dr. Brugsch says they are the people of Taineia,
mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy. And who are the people of
Taineia ? They are the remains of the Daanau. Finally, theZakkar are identified with the Zygritae (vol. ii. p. 151), and when we
ask who the Zygritae were, we find that they were a small tribe, who
perpetuated the name of the Zakkar. Surely it is not a very scien
tific process to identify a powerful ancient race with a small one
first heard of a thousand years later, and then to explain that the
weak tribe is the descendant of the strong one. We think it is suf
ficiently obvious that Dr. Brugsch’s theory is no satisfactory substi
tute for the older system, which recognised powerful and historical
peoples of the Levant in powerful prehistoric races of almost iden
tical names, only slightly altered by Egyptian orthography.
Let us now turn from the record of names in his inscriptions to
the record of facts in the bas-reliefs. In these representations
�1879]
Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
181
preserved to us through three thousand years, we may admire, with
absolute confidence, the lively pictures of the old masters of the
Mediterranean. From the representations of the battle on land, it is
plain that the Tekkri and Pelesta were in the same social con
ditions as the Cimbri who were defeated by Marius, and the Tartars
who invaded Russia in the thirteenth century. Like the Tartars,
they came to conquer and settle; they brought their wives and chil
dren with them in huge wains of wicker work, with solid wheels,
■each wain being drawn by four oxen. The descriptions of the
Russian annalist might serve for an account of these inroads of the
Tekkri. The Egyptians, like the Slavs, must have been dismayed
by ‘ the grinding of the wheels of the wooden chariots, the bellowings of the buffaloes, the howling of the barbarians.’ While the
warriors of the Tekkri and Pelesta were fighting in open chariots
like those of the Egyptians and Greeks, the wains with the women
and children were drawn up in the rear. The van of the foreign
army was routed, and in the pictures of Medinet Habou we see
the Egyptians falling on the waggons, and slaying the children
whom the women in vain endeavour to rescue. It is a singular
fact that the Tekkri who took the lead of the land-forces also
supplied many mariners to the confederate navy. In the sea-piece
which preserves the events of the naval battle, we recognise the
Tekkri by their peculiar head-piece, which is not absolutely unlike
a rude form of the later Greek helmet. This head-piece is also
worn by Pelesta, Daanau, and Uashuash.
The picture of the sea-fight throws a great deal of light on the
civilisation of the predecessors (we dare not say ‘ ancestors ’) of
Agamemnon. The artist has been most careful to mark the differ
ence between the ships of the Shalkalsha, Shardana, and Daanau, and
those of his own countrymen. The Egyptian vessels are low at prow
and stern, either extremity is tipped by a carved lion’s head, and it
is easy for a warrior to have one foot on deck, and the other on the
figure head of his ship. The bulwarks are slightly raised at each
extremity, and the ships must have been half-decked. The confede
rates on the other hand fight in barques which are lofty in prow
and stern. Either extremity is finished off with a bird’s beak,
which rises high out of the water. The reader of Homer at once
recognises the v^val KopwvLCL. the ships with beaks at either end,
the vsas apbfybsXMT&as, vessels curved at prow and stern (recurvatae)
of the poet. The later barques of the Greeks, as we see them
painted on vases of the sixth century, were quite unlike these. The
prow was by that time constructed for ramming purposes, for which
these high birds’ beaks of the early Mediterranean vessels were not at
all adapted. That the people of the Mediterranean did use such
vessels as those which they man in the Egyptian pictures, is proved by
a very old Cyprian vase in the Cesnola collections (Cesnola’s ‘ Cyprus,’
pl. xlv.). On this vase is painted a ship with the arrangement of mast
and sail common to the barques of the Egyptians and their enemies.
�182
Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
[August
The prow and stern, however, are built high out of the water,
and protected, as in the reliefs, by lofty bulwarks. This is good
evidence to the accuracy of the Egyptian draughtsmen, who were
careful to mark all these distinctions, as they were engaged in com
piling historical records, rather than in producing mere works of art.
In the sea-fight the Egyptians are, of course, having the best of'
the battle. The masts of the Tuirsha, Tekkri, and Shakalsha are
going by the board; the Egyptians shower in their arrows with
deadly effect; the Tekkri, with drawn swords, in vain attempt to
drive back the boarders. The face of the sea is covered with the
bodies of men who have fallen from the decks, and the Egyptians,
with the clemency which was peculiar to them, help the wounded
to reach the shore, or take them on board their own vessels. In some
of the ships of the allied invaders are soldiers who wear a peculiar
helmet. It so far resembles the helmets of the Shardana, that it has
a curved horn on each side, but, unlike them, it has no spike and
ball in the centre. A horned helmet of the same sort (but probably
much later) has been found in an Italian grave, and may be seen in
the British Museum. In other ships of the allies appear the Tekkri,
with their crested bonnets, mingled with allies who wear the conical cap
of the Greek and Etruscan sailors, the cap, or fez, which, in Greek art, is
worn by Odysseus. The wearers of these caps are, probably with justice,
recognised as the Tuirsha, whom Dr. Brugsch calls the Taurians,
but whom we prefer to call Etrurians or Tyrrhenians. The striped
tunics worn by these two last classes of allies are the same as those
in which the Shardana were still dressed, even after they had become
allies of the Egyptians.
We have now caught a glimpse of the races in whom it seems not
unreasonable to recognise Mediterranean peoples, the ancestors of
Homer’s heroes. We may say, then, with some confidence, that for
centuries before the period dealt with in the Homeric poems, the dwellers
on the borders of the midland sea, the Tuirsha, Shakalsha, Aqaiusha,.
Tekkri, and the rest, were adventurous warriors, capable of forming
such large confederacies as those which took part in the siege of
Troy. About the Tekkri, we may say with certainty that they had
not passed the period of great national migrations. Unless a whole
people had moved, or had at least sent out a ver sacrum, they would
not have led with them women and children, in the wains drawn by
oxen. About the sea-faring Aqaiusha, Shakalsha, and Shardana, we
cannot speak so certainly. ‘ They desired to breathe a soft air,’ they
were eager to plunder the Egyptians, but it does not seem that they
brought their women with them, or definitely meant to settle. When
we turn from the monuments to Homer, we certainly find in him a
picture of an established society contented with secure habitations.
The Achaeans and Argives of the poems are deeply attached to
home; their thoughts always go back from the leaguer under Troy
to wives, children, and aged fathers, who now and again send them
news of their welfare, from Phthia, Crete, or Argos. Homer knows
�i
1879]
Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
183
nothing of combined Achaean invasions of Egypt. The more recent
feuds of the eastern and western shores of the Aegean have put apy
t
such adventures out of memory. Only here and there the roaming
spirit of the older pirates survives in such men as Odysseus feigned
himself to be, in the story told to Eumaeus (Odyssey, xiv. 240-300).
When he there describes himself as a Cretan pirate who ventured to
make a raid on Egypt, he also declares that such adventurous persons
are now rare. His joy, he says, is in all that other men hold in horror.
Though Homer knows nothing of confederated invasions of Egypt,
le his acquaintance with the manners of the country is tolerably exact.
He knows Thebes as the richest city in the world, full of stored wealth,
of chariots, and horses. Mr. Gladstone and others have tried to show
that this description could only apply to Thebes in the days of its im
perial prosperity. We cannot possibly say, however, how long the
memory of Thebes as the 4 mickle-garth’ of the world might survive its
actual decline. It is unnecessary to discuss Dr. Lauth’s bold attempt
>■
to find Ramses III., 4 the old man of the sea,’ in the Proteus of the
fourth book of the Odyssey. Proteus is merely the Homeric form
of the marchen which in Scotland becomes the ballad of Tamlane.
Setting aside these far-fetched conjectures, it is certain that Homer
knows 4 the River Aegyptus,’ which in Hesiod has already become 4 the
Nile.’ He knows Thebes and its wealth ; he knows the island Pharos.
He is familiar with the clemency of the Egyptians. The king, in
, the story of Odysseus, conveys the pirate chief safely away in his own
t
chariot, just as the sailors, on the monuments, rescue their drowning
E
enemies. Homer is also aware that the Egyptians had friendly relations
with Cyprus and Phoenicia (Odyssey, xvii. 440). He knows the
V
Egyptian reputation for skill in medicine. 4 There each man is a
physician skilled beyond all others, for they are of the race of Paeaeon.’
(Od. iv. 211, 213.) To be brief, Egypt is to Homer a land within
the limits of the real world ; it is beyond Libya that the enchanted
isles and shores come into the ken of his wandering hero.
We have tried to show reason for maintaining the opinion that
the Egyptian monuments reveal to us a moment in the national
education of the early Greeks. Egypt probably gave them their first
glimpse of a settled and luxurious civilisation, first taught them to
take delight in other things than 4 swords, shafts, and spears, and
ships with long oars.’ What manner of life would Greek prisoners or
mercenaries see in Egypt ? There they would find towns wealthier
than the fabled city of the Phaeacians. Thebes alone they knew
of as a dim rich city that rose on the borders of the world, as did
Byzantium on the horizon of the Danes. In Thebes and the other
cities of Egypt they beheld 4 the fields full of good things, the canals
rich in fish, the lakes swarming with wild fowl, the meadows green
with herbs. There are lentils in endless abundance, and melons
honey-sweet grow in the well-watered fields. The barns are full of
wheat, and reach as high as heaven; the vine, the almond, and the
fig-tree grow in the gardens. Sweet is their wine, and with honey do
�184
Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
[August
they -mingle it. The youths are clacl always in festive array, the fine oil
is poured upon their curled locks.’ It is thus that an Egyptian scribe
depicts one of the towns of his country. The picture is precisely that
which Homer draws of ideal luxury and comfort. Even in trifling
details the Homeric domestic life is like that of Egypt. In Phaeacia, as
in the monuments, kings’ daughters drive chariots. In Ithaca, as in
Thebes, kings and queens are fond of geese, of all birds1 In the tribute
brought to Thutmes III. from the Phoenician land are 4 two geese.
These were dearer to the king than anything else’ (Brugsch, i. 334).
Compare Penelope’s story of her dream: 4 Twenty geese have I in the
house that eat wheat out of the water-trough, and it gladdens me to
look on them.’ (Odyssey, xix. 540.) In the Egyptians’ 4 Garden of
Flowers ’ the northern mercenaries may have seen the strange tamed
beasts, and have undergone (as some romances in the papyri show us)
the magic wiles of Circe. (See 4 Records of the Past,’ vi. 152, iv. 129 ;
where there are ancient Egyptian stories in the style of the 4 Arabian
Nights.’) If the stranger passed through the temple precincts he
saw the walls covered with signs, which perhaps were deciphered for
him. He then listened to chants like those which the minstrels of
his own lands were soon to recite. There are some curious, though
probably accidental resemblances, in the style of Egyptian and
Greek epic poetry. The similes are often identical. Thus the
slaughtered Khita, under the walls of Kadesh, are said by the
Egyptian poet to lie kicking in heaps, like fishes on the ground.
Compare the slain wooers in the Odyssey (xxii. 384) : 4 He
found all the host of them fallen in their blood, in the dust, like
fishes that the fishermen have drawn forth in the net, into a
hollow of the beach, from out of the grey sea .... and the
sun shines forth and takes their life away.’ In the account of the
battles with the invaders, the Egyptian warriors 4 come down like
lions of the hills, like hawks stooping upon birds.’ The Khita,
before Ramses II., are 4 like the foals of mares, which tremble before
the grim lions.’ But the Egyptian poet most closely resembles
Homer when he dilates on the valour and piety of Ramses II., when
cut off from his army at Kadesh. The religious sentiment, the
relations between Amon and Ramses, are precisely like those between
Odysseus and Athene. Ramses, with his charioteer, is alone in the
crowd of foes. Then he calls to Amon, as Aias calls to Zeus, or
Odysseus to Athene, reminding the god of all the honours he has
paid him. 4 Shall it be for nothing that I have dedicated to thee
many temples, and sacrificed tens of thousands of oxen? Nay, I
find that Amon is better to me than millions of warriors, than
hundreds of thousands of horses.......................... Amon heard my voice,
and came at my cry (saying), 441 am with thee, and am more to thee
than hundreds of thousands of warriors.” ’ This is like the reply of
Athene to Odysseus : 4 And now I will tell thee plainly, even though
fifty companies of men should compass us about, and be eager to slay
us in battle, their kine shouldst thou drive off, and their brave flocks.’
�1879]
Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks.
185
These resemblances, and many others, are, no doubt, the result
of similar ideas prevailing in societies not wholly uninfluenced by
each other. The point we have tried to prove is, that the Homeric
civilisation had been influenced by occasional contact with Egypt.
The pre-Homeric Greeks seem to have mixed, in their years of
youthful audacity and unsettled temper, with the most civilised
people of the earlier world, and to have looked, with their eager eyes
and teachable minds, on the marvels of the empire of Ramses.
They were in connection, in short, with the highly developed art and
culture which the Phoenicians spread from the Euphrates to Egypt,
and through the islands to the Hellenic coasts. Centuries of these
oriental influences gradually ripened society into the free and flexible
organisation which we meet in the lays of Homer.
A. Lang.
Sonnet
SUGGESTED BY THE PICTURE OF THE ANNUNCIATION,
BY E. BURNE JONES.
Woman, whose lot hath alway been to bear
Love’s load beneath the heart, set there to hold
It high, and keep it resolute and bold
To clasp God’s feet, and hang on to the fair
Wide skirts of light,—thy sealed sense can spare
The open vision, thou being called to fold
From time’s mischance, and from the season’s cold,
The wonder in thy breast, and nurse it there.
What though thy travail hath been long and sore,
Love being borne in so great heaviness,
Through loss and labour, joy shall be the more
Of love that living shall the nations bless :
Love that shall set man’s bounden spirit free,
The ‘ holy thing’ that still is born of thee.
Emily Pjfeiffer.
cv
A
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Egypt and the Pre-Homeric Greeks
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Lang, Andrew [1844-1912]
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Collation: 171-185 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From Fraser's Magazine 20 (August 1875). From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[s.n.]
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1879
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CT52
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Classics
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greek Poetry
Egypt-History
Greece-History
Homer
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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
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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.
507
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.
�520
*
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
�522
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
�524
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
�1868.]
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.
�526
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
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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.
�
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>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Epic philosophy
Creator
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Wasson, David Atwood
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1868
Identifier
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CT53
Rights
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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 (Epic philosophy), 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>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Poetry
Mythology
Classics
Ancient Greek Poetry
Epic Poetry
Homer
Mythology