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324
On
the
Origin
of a
[March
Written Greek Literature.
T is difficult for us, who live in a reading age, and have so longbeen familiar with rapid and easy methods of writing and printing,
to realise the idea of a highly civilised community which could not,
or did not, read and write. Nevertheless, there are very good reasons
for believing that such a state of society is not only possible, but that
it actually did exist. ‘ There was,’ says Mr. Grote, 4 in early Greece
a time when no reading class existed.’ Even the more educated, who
could read public records and inscriptions, may have had no practice
at all in writing. We are too apt to determine these questions by a
reference to our own standards. But a few generations ago men got
on pretty well in our own country without steam-engines, railways,
or the penny post, all which we have come to regard as social
necessities. And when anything has become, in the present state of
affairs, a necessity, we are apt to forget the difference of circumstances,
in great measure, perhaps, created by it, under which we have learnt
to view it as such. We can hardly comprehend how, some thirty
years ago, all the despatches and all the passenger traffic between
London and Edinburgh were carried in half-a-dozen coaches aday, going
ten miles an hour. That is because the present enormous traffic itself
has been created by the improved facilities for it. Everybody reads
now because there are penny papers and an abundance of cheap
periodicals; and so again, it is the supply which has given such an
immense impulse to the desire to avail ourselves of it. In other
words, supply and demand always mutually act and react upon each
other.
It is quite conceivable then that even in very civilised and in
tellectual nations painting or sculpture for the eye and oral recitation
for the ear might have sufficed for a long time both for the recording
of facts and for the communicating of ideas. In this sense, a litera
ture (though the term itself would be an anomaly) may have existed
without the use of writing. For instance, the facts of history may
have been handed down by tradition and taught by lectures. Com
positions both in prose and verse could be learnt by heart and recited
without ever having been written down at all. The art of speaking
must have long preceded the art of writing, and it may even have
flourished the more from the absence of the latter. Thus in Homer
we find Nestor and Ulysses famed for their eloquence, though no hint
of writing or of reading is anywhere to be found in the Homeric
poems. It is even probable that the high development of oratory
and of sculpture at Athens in the time of Pericles was mainly due to
the want of a current or circulated literature, which deficiency was
supplied by a corresponding proficiency in the sister arts. Human
I
�i88o]
On a Written Greek Literature.
325
intellect is sure to find its expression in one way if it cannot in
another. In the middle ages, Bible History was taught by stained
glass windows and frescoed walls, just because there were no printed
Bibles or Prayerbooks. And Dr. Maitland in his 4 Dark Ages ’ remarks
on the extraordinary knowledge of Scripture which gives a tone and
a character to all the writings and records of a period when some
would have us believe that the Bible was 4 unknown.’ So with the
early Greeks,—where men could not write or read in private, they
talked and listened in public. The modes of instruction differed
from ours, but the instruction was there, and the result was the same,
—making due allowance for the difference in the aggregate of human
knowledge,-—a general intelligence and a power and habit of thought,
with a feeling for the harmonious and the beautiful, and a sound
judgment in social and political questions. Our ideas of the most
necessary elements of education are combined in the convenient
monosyllables read and wfe; and we joke about ‘the three B’s ’
When we add a small modicum of knowledge in figures. Without
such rudiments, a person now becomes a boor and a churl. But it
was not so always. Perhaps indeed this thought suggests a psycho
logical reason why the general decline of art should be so nearly
coincident throughout Europe with the general use of printing-, or
What is called 4 the revival of letters.’ This was a new method by
which genius found utterance, and it drew men’s attention away from
Other and older methods. There would not have been a Pheidias if
there had been a printing-press in the Athenian Acropolis. There
would have been no Greek Plays if there had been Daily Newspapers
to discuss the current topics of the period. From this habit of
realising descriptions not from written accounts but from painted or
sculptured forms, we often find the Greeks comparing living objects to
Statuary, as when a female form is described by the phrase 4 beautiful
as a statue, 4 looking as though in a picture,’ and a man’s character
as 4 unskilfully painted,’ for 4 unfavourably presented to one’s notice.’
So also those versed in ancient lore are spoken of as 4 possessing the
forms painted by older hands.’1 The astonishing number of stillextant Greek vases going back many centuries before the Christian
era, and containing a whole mythology in their designs, is sufficient
to prove the proposition, that painting rather than writing was the
vehicle of ideas to the ancient Greeks.
There are, as I hope to show, grounds for believing that although
they early possessed the Semitic alphabet, they made no great use of
it for a long time except for the writing or inscribing names, laws,
treaties, decrees, or other short records public or domestic. All these
uses are widely different from the transcription of current literature,
and great confusion has been made in this respect by those who thinkI
I41/ 774‘ Kur- Hec- 559- Hippol. 451- In the latter passage
is sometimes, but very erroneously, interpreted ‘ writings.’
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On the Origin of
[March
the antiquity of writing in itself proves the antiquity of copying
books.
I call attention to a most singular, significant, and important fact,
which, so far as I am aware, has never been noticed. It is this : that
the Greek language, so copious, so expressive, not only has no proper
verbs equivalent to the Roman legere and scribere? but it has no
terms at all for any one of the implements or materials so familiar to
us in connection with writing (pen, ink, paper, book, library, copy,
transcript, &c.) till a comparatively late period of the language. The
only exception is, that one or two words expressing 2tablets,’—
4
3
probably of wood overlaid with wax,—are found in the earlier writers
of the Periclean era. But it is abundantly clear that the use of letters
for literary purposes was regarded as quite subordinate, and solely as
an 4 aid to memory,’ in which sense it is often spoken of. Thus,
Prometheus is said to have communicated to man 4 the putting
together of letters, as a means for making an artificial memory the
recorder of all things;’ and there is a well-known myth in the
4 Phaedrus ’ of Plato, in which the Egyptian god Theuth or Thoth is
said to have given letters 4 to assist memory,’ to which it is objected
by the then King of Egypt, that this new art will make men forget
rather than remember, 4 because, from trusting to external signs, and
from the non-practice of memory, they will cease to recal facts from
their own minds.’3 We have early mention also of inscriptions on
bronze plates;4 but the word for 4 book ’ (which is our word
4 Bible ’) does not occur at all till near the time of Plato, or shortly
before b.c. 400. The first mention of it, I think, is in the 4 Birds ’ of
Aristophanes5 (b.c. 415), and here it only means a collection of
written oracles, which, perhaps, were among the first records that
began to be written down.6 Speaking generally, it is quite extra
ordinary how very scanty are the notices of writing, or of any of its
kindred operations or materials, throughout the earlier Greek Litera
ture. Even in the Dialogues of Plato, though we know written books
were then fully introduced, there is a total silence as to how and on
what they were written.
But here comes the difficulty, from which we must try to find an
escape. There is a Greek Literature, and a very copious one. We
2 The Greek equivalent to legere means ‘to speak,’ ancl that to scribere means
properly ‘to draw’ or ‘paint,’—primarily, as in Homer, ‘to scratch or mark a
surface.’ It came to be used in the sense of ‘writing ’ because it was at first (as we
see in the earliest vases) an adjunct to descriptive painting. The Greeks had two
verbs which indirectly express ‘ reading,’—but they are clumsy shifts, unworthy of
so complete a language, the one meaning recognoscere, the other sibi colligere, ‘ to
have something put before one in a collective form.’ The earliest passage in which
‘ reading a written name ’ occurs, is Pindar, 01. x. 1-3. After the age of Pericles, the
verb ‘ to write ’ was used commonly enough in our literary sense.
»
3 Aesch. Prom. 460. Plat. Phaedr. p. 274, chap. lix.
4 Sophocles, Track,. 683.
5 V. 974. In Herod, i. 123 and iii. 128, Pi&Klov means ‘a small piece of byblus,’
as XPVC,LOV means ‘a gold coin,’ a bit of xpvo-Js.
6 See Soph. Track. 1167.
�1880]
a Written Greek Literature.
327
have the long histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, to say nothing
of Homer and Hesiod and a great number of Greek Plays. It is
evident that these, or most of these (allowing that epic poems may
have been orally handed down) must have been written. How can
we reconcile this fact, which may be regarded as certain, with the
scanty notices of writing itself? This consideration should make us
somewhat timid in pressing ‘ negative evidence ’ too far.
This is, indeed, a most important and difficult inquiry. To
answer it fully and properly would require a long investigation ; but
the results may be stated in brief. We have no proof whatever that
the papyrus, though so early known and used as a writing-material
by the Egyptians, was so employed by the Greeks. There is much
more reason to think that the authors of works laboriously wrote them
on strips of wood (probably on a surface prepared with wax), and
kept from contact, when laid upon each other, by raised margins like
our school-slates. These would be very durable, though not perhaps
very portable ; and yet, they would not of necessity be much larger
or heavier than the ponderous folios which were issued by printers
only two centuries ago.
Such books were not meant in the first instance for transcription.
It may be greatly doubted, for example, if it would have been possible
to procure, for money, a copy of Herodotus or Thucydides in the life
time of the authors. The autograph copies were used only for
4 readings ;’ and when we are told that Herodotus read his History
at the Olympian Games, and that Thucydides, when a boy, heard it,
and burst into tears,7 there is nothing in the anecdotes beyond what
is extremely probable. For these ‘Displays,’ as the Greek rhe
toricians called them, or ‘ Headings ’ and ‘ Recitations ’ (as we call
them after the Roman custom), were the only way by which the
contents of such works could become known, as transcription for
general circulation was evidently impossible, and as there were (so
far as we know) no ‘Readers,’ as-a class, so there could be no
‘Writers’ or transcribers by profession.
I must guard myself here by stating that I am not now making
a rash or dogmatic assertion. I am only expressing the view which
my researches into this question have led me to accept as on the
whole the most probable view. It does not in the least follow that
because the art of writing was known, and because the proper mate
rials for it may have early existed, that therefore they were made
available for the copying of books. What we should call ‘ spouting,'
or the sensational oral delivery of poetry or prose—more often from,
memory than from written copies—was the Greek method of gaining
attention to literary compositions, and so we find the art of the Rhap-
Life of Thucydides by Marcellinus. This is quite compatible with what
Thucydides says of his own history in i. 22, that it was not composed to vie with
others in attracting an audience for the time, or merely to be ‘pleasing to hear' (es
a.Kpiaaiv'), but to keep and lay by as a possession for all time.
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On the Origin of
["March
sodist flourished even in the times of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristo
phanes. It seems to be commonly assumed, but wholly without proof,
that the earlier Greeks had some writing-material equivalent to our
paper or parchment. It is no use to indulge in mere assertion, and
say that ‘ Papyrus, with the Egyptian trade open now for over a cen
tury and a half, nzusi have been cheap and plentiful in Greece and
Sicily.’8 Why, then, is it never mentioned as a writing-material ?
There is indeed one verse in Aeschylus9 in which he speaks of certain
commands not being ‘ sealed down in folds of byblus,’ after the man
ner of an official missive, but delivered viva voce : but the genuine
ness of the verse cannot, even for metrical reasons, be trusted, and
the context tends to show it is a later interpolation. Anyhow, it is
evident, from the mention of sealing, that letter-writing, and not the
copying of literature, must be alluded to. Still the line is one of the
greatest importance to the determination of this question; for, if
papyrus was used for letter-writing, it could also have been used forcopying books.
Herodotus does indeed tell us10 that the Ionians used prepared
skins for writing on, and this is probably the origin of parchment.I
11
Yet no notice of it anywhere occurs beyond the brief statement he
makes to this effect. There is nowhere the slightest indication that
either papyrus or parchment was ever used for the transcription of
literary works.
What, then, did they use? For, even if Homer and Hesiod and
the rhapsodists who represented them, made no written copies (which,
in itself, they either may or may not have done), it cannot be doubted
that the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles were written down from the
first; and being so written, they must have been preserved (and all
the more carefully because they were unique autograph copies)
either in temples, or treasuries, or among the State archives, till the
times of the Alexandrine school of learning, when for the first time
the use of papyrus and the practice of transcription became common;
and from them have come down to us the copies we still possess in a
more or less corrupt state of the texts.12
Nothing could be more convenient than light strips or tablets
of wood, called by the Greeks SeXrot and vrlvaKss. Each would
represent a page; and for the purposes of a note-book, or of trans
mission under seal, they could easily have been used like the 'Roman
pugillares. That the surface was covered with a thin layer of wax
is probable from many considerations. In the first place it is a
material very cheap, very plentiful, very easily impressed or obliteI Dr. Hayman in the Journal of Philology, viii. p. 138.
9 Suppl. 947.
10 Book v. 58.
II Corrupted from Pergamena, from its manufacture at Pergamos in Asia Minor.
12 Diogenes Laertius tells us that Xenophon stole and published (as he also
himself continued) the History of Thucydides. This anecdote, if true, shows that
the book had not been published or circulated (Laert. ii- 6, § 13).
�i88o]
a IVntten Greek Literature.
329
rated,13 and very durable. We have a vast number of ancient deeds,
and the waxen seals still appended to them remain in good preserva
tion after the lapse of six or seven centuries. There are incidental
notices of these waxed tablets being used in the Athenian law-courts
for indictments and other purposes. So in the ‘ Clouds ’ there is a
joke about melting the letters of a writ in the sunshine,14 and in the
‘Wasps’ we read of an old juryman having his finger-nail full of
wax from scratching a line on a tablet. It is therefore highly pro
bable that a stiff and not a flexible material was at first used for
writing; in other words, the school-slate preceded the use of the
copy-book ; and the ‘ black board ’ of the lecturer is still a witness
to the ancient custom. It is the origin too of the diptychs and
tnptychs that came into use over the altars of churches, not, at first,
for paintings, but for lists of written names.
The examples of Egypt and Assyria, not to mention some other
countries, as Lycia, Phoenicia, and Etruria, tend to show that the
earliest form of writing was scratching stone or clay,—a process essen
tially different from the use of the pen. The form of the arrow-headed
character is thought to show that clay-cylinders, impressed by an
angulai piece of wood or metal, were used before the inscriptions
were cut in stone, which must have been very early, though not so
early as Egyptian hieroglyphics on granite. Assyrian inscriptions
on slabs considerably exceed 1,000 years b.c. The Greeks too made
inscriptions on stone pillars (crTijXai) as early as Solon or Pisistratus,
peihaps, very short and badly executed, so far as we can now judge
from the ungainly shapes of the letters and the non-division of
words. The early ‘lettering’ of the Greek vases, of about the
same period, belongs to the department of painting rather than of
writing proper; and it hardly extended, for two or three centuries,
beyond single words. As a rule, ancient sites, e.g. those called
Gyclopian, are wholly destitute of inscriptions; we might as well
expect to find letters on a block at Stonehenge as on a polygonal or
Squared stone at Mycenae. Even the scratches on the clay balls
(whorls) found by Schliemann at Hissarlik have no claim at all to be
considered as writing. Nor have any Hebrew inscriptions of any antifl^ty (apart from the Moabitic stone,15 with its Assyrian and Egyptian
affinities of form and material) ever come to light in any of the
explorations at Jerusalem or in Palestine. The sole exception to
the absence of ancient writing other than that on stone, seems to be
certain papyri found m Egyptian tombs, which are said to claim a
Very high antiquity.
mpltlXhe+lTOrd Ted by E™Pides for altering words in a SeAros is ffvyx&v, implying
J® L X
6’
obllterat“S words with the blunt end of a stilus? \>l.
SeeZHerodTifi .23e9ared
Called
°r
(Ju1’ Pollux’ Onom- x‘ 58)-
dass ltnSSta°nPdVery remarkable for the early mention of a
glass lens and its use for drawing the sun rays into a focus.
Questioned Tnd SpV?6 ®Upp°sed,date of this stone’ B-c- 896’ is now seriously
questioned, and the date placed as late as B.c. 260 (Atlienceum, Dec. 6, 1879).
*
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On the Origin of
[March
But because the Egyptians had the papyrus and wrote upon it, it
must not be assumed, as it too often is, contrary to all evidence, that
the early Greeks used it too, and wrote copies of Homer upon it
even in the time of Solon. ■ A stone-cutter with his chisel is a widely
different person from a student with his pen. It is curious to find
written words described as composed of ‘shapes’ rather than of
letters. Thus, in the ‘Theseus’ of Euripides,16 a countryman
(illiterate, of course) describes the letters composing the name as so
many combinations of lines, circles, and zig-zags, just as if the
letter A were described to us by a country bumpkin as ‘ two sticks
set aslant with a bar across them.’17 There was a legend that
Palamedes ‘ invented writing’ in the time of the Trojan War; and
in allusion to this we have a droll scene in Aristophanes, where
Mnesilochus, a relative of Euripides, while in prison cuts a rude
inscription on pieces of wood, and throws them out to inform his
friends of his trouble.
The custom of sending written messages must have prevailed
early; and we may safely place letter-writing before book-writing.
The scytale was one of the earliest contrivances, and it was a very
ingenious one. Two persons privately kept staves or batons of
precisely the same diameter, so that a strip of bark or skin wrapped
round, and written on lengthwise, would be intelligible only by
precisely the same arrangement of the lines, since the order of the
words would become disjointed on a stick of any other diameter.
There is hardly any allusion to ‘ books ’ earlier than the writings
of Plato. And it is very remarkable that they are spoken of as a
novelty and a development in the ‘ Frogs ’ of Aristophanes (b.c. 404),
where it is said18 ‘that everyone now has a book and learns wisdom
out of it.’
We must next inquire how far the preceding remarks agree with
the opinions ordinarily held by scholars. And this inquiry will
show, I think, how erroneous, or, at least, how baseless, are many of
the current opinions on the subject.
Mr. Grote19 writes as follows : ‘ The interval between Archilochus
and Solon (660-580 b.c.) seems, as has been remarked in my former
volume, to be the period in which writing first came to be applied to
Greek poems,—to the Homeric poems among the number; and
shortly after the end of that period, commences the era of compo
sitions without metre or prose. The philosopher Pherecydes of
gyros, about 550 b.c., is called by some the earliest prose-writer.
But no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards acquired any
celebrity,—seemingly none earlier than Hecataeus of Miletus, about
510-490 B.c.—prose being a subordinate and ineffective species of
16 Frag. 385, Dind.
17 Athenaeus, who quotes this in Book x., gives other examples of similar
descriptive accounts given by those who could not read.
18 V. 1113.
19 Hist, of Greece, Part ii. chap. xxix. (vol. iv. p. 24).
�i88o]
a Written Greek Literature.
331
composition, not always even perspicuous, and requiring no small
practice before the power was acquired of rendering it interesting.’
He adds (p. 25), ‘The acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it
does about the age of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an
evidence of past, than as a means of future, progress.’
In accordance with the view of an early written literature here
laid down (as if it were a plain and acknowledged matter of fact) we
read, in the Dictionaries of Biography, of Cadmus of Miletus, Charon
of Lampsacus, Pherecydes, Hecataeus, Acusilaus, Hellanicus, all of
whom are stated to have lived earlier than b.c. 500. When howevei, we look into the authorities for these alleged composers of
written prose works, we find only Strabo, Plutarch, Diodorus, Pliny,
and others who lived six centzbries later, appealed to in proof of the
assertion. With the exception of Acusilaus who is once quoted by
Plato, Hellanicus once by Thucydides, and Hecataeus, three or four
times by Herodotus, we find no reason to believe that their written
works, if they then existed, were known to or made use of by the
historians of the very next century. Therefore, if their works really
existed in MS., they were either unknown or inaccessible to the
writers who next succeeded them, or these latter were (which is very
impi obable) so careless that they did not consult works known to
have been written on the very subjects they undertook to record.
We must fall back on the supposition, that if there really were
written copies, either the authors of them had scarcely any literary
reputation,, or they reserved their own properties to be used for
‘ Readings ’ or as repertories from which oral instruction might be
obtained, but not either for lending or for circulation. And such a
view is, without , doubt, in itself neither absurd nor impossible. It
will make the limited existence of written literary works at least
conceivable at that early period.
. But the difficulty does not stop here. We find in the early Greek
writers, e.g. in Herodotus, mention made of three distinct kinds of
literary persons, those ‘ versed in history ’ (called Xoymt),20 ‘ com
posers of stories,’ and ‘writers of stories.’ The last term is the
latest of the three, a fact significant in itself. There must have been
separate professions corresponding to these several terms. The oldest
are the,Adymq whom we find mentioned in Pindar along with the
Baids (aotSot), and several times, e.g. in the opening chapter, by
Herodotus. W^e cannot doubt that they were a class of men who
were authorities in history, such as ‘ history ’ then was, i.e. in the
main mere mythology. Oral anecdotes of marvellous exploits or
adventures, clan-stories of prowess, and all that we express by the
ie esPress^ speaks of the memory of these men,—a fact that alone
proves the absence of teaching from books. They probably consulted such inscrin10ns as existed, and made themselves acquainted with oracles, records of temples
and prytanea (town-halls), and they may have made written notes of them. Granting
even this as possible or probable, we are still far from the era of a Written Litera
ture m circulation.
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On the Origin of
[March
terms tales and anecdotes, were called Xoyoz. by the early Greeks.
Such stories were told by Patroclus to amuse the wounded Eurypylus
in his tent, while soothing the pain of his wound.21 And we know
from Aristophanes22 that droll stories of Aesop’s were orally recited at
the dinner-table. Hence he is called by Herodotus, in common
with Hecataeus of Miletus, Xoyo7roibs, 4 a story-maker.’ Dr. Hayman is not justified in saying23 that4prose-writer is undoubtedly
the sense in which Herodotus applies XogoTrohos to Hecataeus.’ We
read in the 4 Phaedrus ’2425
that Lysias was taunted with being a
4 speech-writer,’ Xoyoypac^os, the alleged reason being that 4 the more
influential men in the states feel scruple at writing their essays or
speeches, and so leaving records of themselves in writing, lest pos
terity should stigmatise them as Sophists.'1 This also furnishes us
with a reason for a repeated boast of Socrates, that he should leave
behind him no offspring of his mind, viz. no books or written
treatises. He appears to be satirising a practice which was beginning
to come in vogue.
There is certainly no proof at all that Herodotus refers to
Hecataeus as a writer. It is perfectly possible, and on the whole
highly probable, that the stories, the histories, or the philosophic
teachings of the earlier Greeks were a purely oral literature. They
were put into writing eventually from the dictation of their pupils
and followers; and thus it happens that in after times the zvritings
of Heraclitus, Anaximander, Thales, and the early philosophers gene
rally, as well as those of the historians preceding Herodotus, are
referred to.25 There is not the slightest ground for believing, while
there are many grounds for doubting, that there was any written
Iliad and Odyssey till the age of ‘books,’ which is that of Plato.
Hence, to suppose that such long poems could have come down
to us, by oral recitation alone, from a period five or six centuries
earlier than that, and unmixed with the countless verses which in the
times of the Tragic poets composed the 4 Tale of Troy,’ is nothing
less than a literary delusion, cherished because it is popular, but
opposed to every principle of fair logical inference from facts.
Books were no sooner introduced than they became both popular
and cheap. Treatises on eloquence, as those by Tisias and Corax
mentioned in the Phaedrus,26 the stories of Aesop, and the philosophical
dogmas of Anaxagoras,27 could be bought at Athens in the time of
Plato for a very small sum. But Thucydides, with the exception of a
21 Iliad xxi.
22 Vesp. 1258.
23 P. 138, in Journal of Philoloqv viii.
24 P. 257. C.
25 It is very significant, that Parmenides and Empedocles wrote philosophy in
rerse, which was so much easier to remember than precepts in prose.
26 P. 273. A. A phrase was soon introduced, ‘You are not up in your Aesop,’&c.,
expressed by the word ov ireira.rr]Kas, the original of our term ‘ trite.’
27 Plat. Apol. p. 26. E; Pliaedo, p. 97. C. Eupolis in Meineke’s Fragm. Com.
vol. ii. p. 550.
�1880]
a Written Greek Literature.
333
single reference by name to the 4 Attic History ’ of Hellanicus, and
Herodotus, who quotes only the statements of Hecataeus in three or
four passages (and both writers in evident disparagement of their
authorities), are unable to appeal to any current written literature.
Thucydides is evidently glancing at Hellanicus when he alludes
(i. 21) to ‘writers of stories who compose rather to please the earthan
with a view to truth.’ He does not seem to have known Herodotus
at all; his appeal is only to hearsay and memory. The following
passages in the Introduction to his History are well deserving of
impartial consideration. It will be observed, that in his sketch of
the early history of Greece from the time of the Trojan War, he
adduces no single fact on the authority of any one except 4 Homer,’ and
he nowhere shows the least consciousness that the Persian wars and
passages in the early history of Sparta had been written by Herodotus.
Thus he says (i. 1. § 2), 4 The events before them (viz. before
the Peloponnesian and the Persian wars), and those yet earlier, it was
impossible to make out clearly through the length of time.’ Again
(ch. 9. § 2), 4 Such, according to my research, is the history of early
Greece, though it is difficult to put full trust in it by all the chain
©f evidence I could collect, because men receive from each other hear
say accounts of the past, even when their own country is concerned,
without any more inquiry than if it were not.’
‘Many other matters, even contemporary events, and not begin
ning to be forgotten through time, the other Hellenic peoples have a
wrong notion about ’ (zb. § 4).
4 Still, from the evidences I have mentioned, one would not be far
wrong in accepting as facts what I have mentioned, that is, if he does
not trust the exaggerations of poets nor the attractive rather than
truthful narratives of story-writers,28*which have become little better
than fables through time, but takes my statements as made with
sufficient certainty considering the length of time that has elapsed.’
Thus we see this great writer, impressed with the deficiency of any
authentic history, either obliged or contented to fall back on infer
ences, memory, hearsay.w If he had known of the large amount of
Spartan traditions recorded in the sixth book of Herodotus, he could
hardly have used the language he employs in i. ch. 9, 4 Now those
affirm, who have received the clearest accounts about the Pelopon
nesus by memory from their predecessors,’ &c.
Herodotus himself commences his history with these notable
words. 4 This is the setting forth ’ (literally, 4 a showing to the eye ’)
4 of the history (or research) of Herodotus, in order that events which
have taken place may not vanish from mankind by time,30 and that
28 He undoubtedly means Hellanicus by the indefinite Koyoypdtpoi. He is com
paring his own narrative of facts, as carefully observed and recorded by himself
with the only existing Attic history that was known, by recitations from it, to his
countrymen.
® rcKp-hpia, pivrifMQ, a.KO'f].
* The word he uses was applied to the fading colour of dyes, or of blood.
�334
On the Origin of
[March
deeds great and worthy of admiration may not come to be without
renown,’ i.e. lose their credit, as they would in the course of ages if
they were narrated only to present hearers, and not recorded in
writing. These are precisely the words of an author who is con
gratulating himself on having achieved something more than had yet
been done for the recording of history. The only meaning we can
fairly attach to his phrase, ‘ become evanescent by time,’ is this,—
that he can fix them in writing, and so make them permanent. But
if others had done so, and if Hecataeus ‘ the story-maker’ had left a
written work, to which Herodotus had access, how very much out of
place the declaration on his part would have been. Now, though
Hecataeus is referred to a few times,31 there is nowhere the slightest
reference to any written book of his. On the whole then, it is
probable, or not improbable, that tales told orally (after a fashion
analogous to the rhapsodists) on the authority of Hecataeus and Aesop
and other composers or compilers, were the only prose literature current
in the time of Herodotus. And thus we understand why Thucydides
says more than once that his work was not meant to ‘ tickle the ear.’
There is a passage in Pindar (Olymp. vi. 90) on which, as bearing
on this subject, a discussion was raised by me some years ago. A mes
senger who conveys an ode, with instructions for the performance of
it, is compared to a scytala, or written scroll. Now, if he carried
with him the ode in writing, the comparison is obviously out of
place. But, if he learnt the ode by heart (Pindar retaining the
autograph copy written on wooden tablets), the oral message is very
well compared to a written missive.
Another passage, about which I had some controversy in one of
the leading Reviews, is that in v. 52 of the ‘ Frogs’ of Aristophanes,
Dionysus is there made to say, after an allusion to the sea-fight off
Arginusae, ‘ As I was reading to myself the “ Andromeda ” on the
ship, a sudden desire caused my heart to beat.’ Does this mean, 4 as
he was reading the play of Euripides from a MS. copy ’ (as one might
now read a book or a paper on board a steamer), or ‘ as he was read
ing the name Andromeda ’ painted on the stern or prow (Pollux, i. 86)
of his own or another vessel ?
No doubt, this is rather a nice point. Conceding, as I have
done, that the use of ‘ Books ’ is mentioned as a novelty, in this very
play, my argument is not seriously affected whichever interpretation
we adopt. I think, however, that this carrying about literary MSS.
for casual perusal is so alien to everything we know about the Greek
habits of the period, that the other explanation must be the true
one. The Andromeda was a ship that had distinguished itself in
the sea-fight, and when Dionysus saw the name’ upon it, it reminded
him of the play of Euripides of the same name.
I think I have shown good reasons for holding Mr. Grote’s state
ments to be, at least, unsupported by evidence, when he affirms32 that
31 See, for instance, Book ii. 143, v. 36, vi. 137.
32 Ilist. of Greece, ii. pp. 148-9,
�1880]
a Written Greek Literature.
335
‘ there is ground for assurance that Greek poems first began to be
written before the time of Solon ’ (b.c. 600), and that ‘ the period
which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first
witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading class in
Greece is from b.c. 660 to b.c. 630.’ He thence jumps to the conclu
sion (which I think contrary to all evidence) that ‘ manuscripts of
the Homeric poems and the other old epics—the Thebais and the
Cypria as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey—began to be compiled
towards the middle of the seventh century b.c., and the opening
of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same
period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite
papyrus to write upon ’ (p. 150).
Mr. Grote could hardly have been aware of the very significant
fact I have pointed out, viz., the total absence from the Greek
vocabulary of all words and terms connected with pen-and-ink
writing, till a comparatively late period. If he had been aware
of it, he would have stateci with less confidence that the ‘first
positive ground which authorises us to presume the existence of a
manuscript of Homer, is the famous ordinance of Solon with re
gard to the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea.’33 Dr. Hayman, who
adopts Mr. Grote’s conclusions, founds it on the same weak argument,
viz. the requirements of lyric poetry, which (he says) could not have
floated over the precarious stage of their unwritten existence if it had
lasted more than one or two generations.’ But these songs were
used socially, and could be recited or sung or played to music by
memory alone; nor is there the least necessity for inferring that ‘ that
first (or unwritten) stage was a very short one,’ or that ‘ unless fixed
at once by MS. they must have died an early death.’34
A great deal has been said by many learned men on the early use
of writing for the purposes of inscriptions and dedicatory offerings,
but no one as yet has sufficiently discriminated the use of letters for
public or state purposes, and the use of them for book-writing. No
doubt, there are notices of writing in several passages of Herodotus;
but they are all notices of quite a different sort from that of copying
volumes of prose or poetry. There are many, very many, specimens of
early handwriting on extant Greek vases; but they are confined to
single names in explanation of the subjects ; the forms, too, of the
letters are quite unsuited to their use for book-writing, and the
absence of all mention of writing-material (except tablets) is against
Mr. Grote’s theory35 of i both readers and manuscripts having attained
a certain recognised authority before the time of Solon.’
It may be argued, that mere negative evidence is not to be pushed
too far. But then why, if there was a written literature in his time,
33 A x44- His argument is founded on an erroneous interpretation of a phrase
which he thought meant ‘ by prompting from a MS.,’ but which really^means ‘in
successive parts.’
3‘ Journal of Philology, viii. p. 134.
35 Vol. ii. p. 150. It is fair to add that F. A. Wolf (Proleg. ai Hom. ch. xvii.
§ 70) avows the same opinion.
�336
On a Written Greek Literature.
[MarSft
does Thucydides appeal to memon/ and hearsay ? Why is there no
mention of ‘ books ’ up to a certain date, and then a common
mention of them ? I have looked through all the extant Greek plays,
tragedies and comedies, and their numerous extant fragments, with a
special view to this question, which I have had before me for years.
It is not till nearly b.c. 400,—that is, two centuries later than the
date assigned by Mr. Grote,—that I find any mention of books, or
writing-masters {grammatistae), or booksellers.35 And as Thucydides
never once quotes Herodotus, or Plato Thucydides—though he does
once refer (Sympos. p. 178. C.) to Acusilaus—the paucity of written
books (if they existed at all except as the private property of the
authors) must be inferred, and the supposed MSS. of the Iliad and
Odyssey before the age of Solon must be relegated to the category of
the barest possibilities.
The close connection of the word [■hfiXbov or fivftXlov with the
name of the papyrus-plant, byblus, may be thought to prove that its
use as a writing-material must have been early known to the Greeks.
‘Papyrus ’ (says Dr. Hayman, already quoted) ‘must have been cheap
and plentiful in Greece and Sicily.’ Pliny however says that papyrus
was not used (he must mean,by the Greeks) for paper before the time
of Alexander the Great. The use of it in Egypt for hieratic writing
may have been so far a secret, that the method of preparing it re
mained for a long time unknown to the Greeks. At all events, we
cannot show that they ever employed it in early times for any docu
mentary purposes. It may have been too brittle, or suited only to a
very dry climate ; we are on a subject on which we have no evidence
at all, and therefore conjectures in one direction are as permissible as
on the other.37
One point in this controversy is undeniable; that the ZeKtos
(which probably consisted of two or three thin plates of wood) was
used for ordinary written messages or communications long before
‘books,’ properly so called, came into use. Euripides38 calls a
ZsKros i a fir tablet,’ 7rsu/c??, and it probably differed only from the
'lrlva^, tabula, in being smaller and more suited for transmission
when tied up and sealed. There is nothing however in the use of
these implements to suggest to our minds the notion of a reading
nr literary class who had libraries or collections of books at their
■command. I am myself of opinion that nothing deserving the
name of a library was known to the Greeks till the era of the great
Alexandrine School under the Ptolemies, and I have no belief in an
oft-told story, that Peisistratus collected a library for the Athenians.
F. A. Paley.
36 A few faint indications of being taught to read occur a little earlier, as when
the sausage-seller in the Knights of Aristophanes (‘ Cavaliers ’ would be a better
rendering of the title) says he knows his letters very little, and that little very
badly.
37 The word xagrgs, charta, occurs in one passage of Plato Comicus, circ. B.C. 425.
�
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On the Origin of a Written Greek Literature
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Paley, Frederick Apthorp
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Collation: 324-336 p. ; 22 cm.
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Text
ALCE8TI8 IN ENGLAND
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
FINSBURY.
JANUARY 21,
1877.
BY
MONCURE D.
Price 2d.
CONWAY.
��ALCESTIS IN ENGLAND.
Not long ago the Alcestis of Euripides was pro
duced at the Crystal Palace, with- accompaniment of
beautiful music by an English composer, Mr. Henry
Gadsby. The large audience was profoundly interested,
and evinced genuine sympathy with all that was
noble, and abhorrence of what was base, in the
characters and action brought before them. The event
has appeared to me significant. Alcestis is one of
the few ancient Greek melodramas. The majority of
dramas left us by the poets of Greece turn upon
religious themes, and usually they are tragedies. It
is evident that to them the popular religion around
them was itself a tragedy. Their heroes and heroines
—such as Prometheus and Macaria—were generally
victims of the jealousy or caprice of the gods ; and
�though the poets display in their dramas the irresistible
power of the gods, they do so without reverence for
that power, and generally show the human victims
to be more honourable than the gods. But the Alcestis
of Euripides is not a tragedy : it ends happily, and in
the rescue of one of those victims of the gods. It
stands as about the first notice served on the gods
that the human heart had got tired of their high
handed proceedings, and they might prepare to quit
the thrones of the universe unless they could exhibit
more humanity.
The story of Alcestis opens with the decree of
the Fates that a certain man, Admetus, shall die.
But Apollo, who had been befriended by Admetus,
asks the Fates to spare him. The Fates say they
are willing, provided any one can be found to die in
his place ; for the powers below have been promised
their victim and must not be cheated, though it does
not matter whether their victim be Admetus or
somebody else. Upon this, Alcestis, the wife of
Admetus, steps forward and offers to die in his stead.
Admetus accepts this vicarious arrangement, but Apollo
feels that it is a rather mean affair; so when Death
comes to claim Alcestis, Apollo tries to argue the
case with him. But Death plants himself upon the
principle of divine justice. The notion of justice
among the gods is, that either the sentenced culprit
shall die or else some innocent person for him.
�5
Apollo is too well read in heavenly law to dispute this
code, but he is rather ashamed of it, and then follows
something peculiar. Knowing that neither he nor any
other deity can legally resist the decree of another
deity, Apollo is reduced to hope for help from man.
Human justice may save where divine justice sacrifices.
He prophesies to Death that although he may seize
Alcestis, a man will come who will conquer him, and
deliver that woman from the infernal realm. There
is then a pathetic scene in which Alcestis dies, making
her last request to her husband to devote himself to
her children, and reminding him of the happiness she
had left in her father’s palace to share his destiny,
and at last die for him. But, now, when she is dead,
Admetus’ father, Pheres, bitterly reproaches his son
for accepting life on such base terms as the death of
another. The people generally reproach him in the
same way, and at length Admetus feels that he has
acted a disgraceful part, and his life so unworthily
saved becomes worthless and miserable.
Then Hercules comes on the scene. He has been
slaying lion and dragon, and he now resolves to
conquer Death and deliver Alcestis. This he does ;
he descends into Hades, and delivers her from prison.
He brings her to her husband amid the general
joy.
There are several points in the story which present
a significant parallelism to the very letter of the legend,
�6
that arose some centuries later, of Christ’s descent into
Hell. For instance, when the rescued and risen
Alcestis is brought into the presence of Admetus he
cannot recognise her : she has yet too much that is
ghostly about her. Hercules tells Admetus it is not
lawful for her to speak to him “ until she is unbound
from her consecration to the gods beneath, and the
third day come.” So we see whence this idea of
rising on the third day is derived, and what notions
surrounded him who reported Jesus as at first not
recognised by Maiy, and then as saying to her, “ Touch
me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”'
The consecration of Hades was still upon him.
However, it is not to such details as these that I
wish to call your attention. It is more important to
consider that the entire drama turns upon the same
principles as the popular religion of England. It
only requires a change of names to make Alcestis a
Christian Passion-play. We have in it the unappeas
able law of Fate corresponding to the divine decree,
by which Jehovah himself was so fettered that there
could be no remission of sentence without the shed
ding of blood. We have the barbaric notion that
justice is satisfied by the vicarious suffering of anyone
at all, willing to sacrifice himself for the person in
volved punishment by proxy. And then, we have a
being who is a god in power, but man in heart: the
god-man Hercules, whose father was Jupiter, but
�7
whose mother was a woman, Alcmene ; and this in
carnate son of God vanquishes the infernal powers,
where a mere deity was powerless to do so on account
of the heavenly etiquette, and the gods’ peculiar notion
of justice.
The god-man Hercules went through the earth
■destroying earthly evils in twelve great Labours. The
legend was one of the most widespread and impres
sive throughout the Greek and Roman world at the
time of the establishment of Christianity. From the
old pictures of Christ’s triumphal pilgrimage on earth,
parallels to the chief labours of Hercules may be
found. Christ is shown treading on the lion, the asp,
the dragon, and Satan; and all the myths converge
in his conquest of Death and Hell. In the old
pictures of Christ delivering souls from Hades, Eve is
generally shown coming out first in suggestive simi
larity to Eurydice following Orpheus, and Alcestis
Hercules.
Such Greek myths mark an ascent of the human
mind above the idea of their early theology, which had
become a sort of pagan Calvinism. The advanced
minds had plainly grown ashamed of gods who
reigned with such an unjust idea as that of vicarious
.suffering; and Euripides dealt with the notion just as a
Freethinker now deals with the same. The audience
at the Crystal Palace applauded Pheres when he
■denounced his own son for the meanness of accepting
�8
salvation through the suffering of another. What
they applauded was an attack on the Christian scheme
of redemption. Pheres only anticipated James Marti
neau, who once similarly rebuked the baseness of those
who would not rather go to hell than be saved by the
death and suffering of an innocent being. What would
the audience have said to Pheres’ sentiment, if it had
been told them that they themselves were so many
Admetuses, accepting safety at the cost of the innocent
Alcestis of Calvary ? What, if they had been reminded
that the principle represented by Death, that justioe
is satisfied by so much suffering without respect to
who is the sufferer, is precisely the same as that by
which Christianity declares that the divine law required
a victim, but was quite satisfied if the innocent suffer
for the guilty ? The audience would, perhaps, have
regarded such suggestions with horror, and yet they
applauded the principle by which Christianity is now
assailed. We need not complain of this. It is much
to congratulate ourselves upon that in Art, at least,
we may have high and noble principles brought before
the people, and responded to by them. It is much
that a miserable superstition, though it may have
enfeebled the moral sentiment of the people, has not
yet eaten into their heart and instinct so far as to make
them really put darkness for light, and honour disease
as health.
In the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter stood just
�9
where Jehovah stood in the Jewish religion. They
were both stern, jealous, vindictive deities,—personi
fications of thunder and lightning,—with no humanity
about them. Gradually, the Greeks became ashamed
of Jupiter, and they began to worship heroes who had
human hearts,—such as Hercules. In the same way,
in another line of development, men became ashamed
of Jehovah, and had to set up the human-hearted
Christ instead of him. In the early days when the
worship of Christ meant an appeal against deified
despotism, it w’as a healthy and noble worship. But
that was before there was anything in the world called
Christianity. Christianity was the overthrow of Christ.
It was the invention of a priesthood who found that
this novel idea of Christ, that God is Love, sending
sunshine alike on good and evil, would prove fatal to
their power. For their purpose men must be terrified.
So they contrived and intrigued until they unseated
Christ with his Gospel of Love, by tacking on to him
the discredited Jove and Jehovah, and setting their
lightnings to work again. They were but too success
ful. He who came “not to condemn but to save”
was made into an awful Judge of the quick and dead.
They have transmitted to us precisely those ideas of
death and hell, vicarious suffering and remorseless,
divine decrees, which the Heraclean apotheosis in
Greece at one period and Christ-worship at another,
overthrew for a time; and they have compelled us
�IO
to do the whole protestant work over again, and re
cover Christ by a rebellion against Christianity.
To-day, again, we see rising a certain shame of
theologic dogmas. Though the Church declares the
Bible to be the word of God, it excludes much of it
from its Lectionary, as unfit to be read in public. The
preachers are so ashamed of their dogmas that they
are angry at hearing them quoted, and say they are
caricatures even when taken literally from their creeds
and confessions. Lately the honour has been conferred
upon us of having our heresies made the subject of spe
cial treatment by the Christian Evidence Society, over
which the Archbishop of Canterbury presides, assisted
by many other prelates. Some recent controversies
which we have had in Holloway led that Society
to delegate four eminent clergymen to demolish our
principles during the Sundays of Advent. Now, those
sermons have been published; 1 have read them care
fully ; and in not one of them is there any defence of
Christianity at all. Not one of them deals with the
fall of man, human depravity, the atonement, or hell
fire. Not one of them has touched on anything
distinctive in Christianity. They eulogise Christ’s
character, applaud his charity, praise the sermon on
the mount, and discourse of everything but the real
points at issue. No Hindoo, reading those Advent
sermons, could gather from any word in them that
English religion believed in the Devil at all, much less
�II
as the natural Father of the human family; or in
eternal hell-fire, or vicarious atonement to an un
relenting God. And yet these men were especially
appointed to defend Christianity !
Why did they not defend it ? Why, they are scholars,
and scholars are ashamed of such dogmas. They are
ashamed of a God who says he will laugh at the
calamity of men and mock when their fear cometh ;
they blush for a dogma which says there was a bargain
struck between the Divine Sovereign and Christ,—so
much sin ransomed with so much blood; they feel the
scandal of such guilty calumnies on men and God as
human depravity and future tortures : they dare not
defend such things. So they surround themselves with
a cloud of verbal incense to Christ and Christianity,
and hope people will understand that at the heart of
the rhetorical cloud there is sound orthodoxy. But I
have never seen so startling a manifestation of the
irresistible rationalism of this age as that four clergy
men—among them a Professor of History, and a
Bampton Lecturer—delegated by a Society of Bishops
and clergy to defend Christianity, should pass over its
every distinctive dogma to praise virtues common to all
religions of the world.
As Balaam in the legend was sent for by Balak to
curse Israel but proceeded to bless them, these
defenders of the faith have left at the end of their
labours an impressive testimony that their so-called
�12
faith is indefensible, and that the most Superstition
can hope for is a golden bridge for its retreat before
the reason and sentiment of our time.
I say the “ sentiment ” of our time, for the orthodox
theology is not only repudiated by disciplined reasoners,
but the whole population have become so ashamed of
it that it cannot be taught in the public schools. The
religion now taught in the National Schools is nearly
the religion of Dr. Channing. It mainly depends now
upon the advance of a higher order of teachers, such
as is sure to appear, that those schools shall diffuse a
rational religion. Such a phenomenon would be im
possible were it not that the people have become
ashamed of the traditional dogmas. It has become
possible for our daily papers to write of “the un
pardonable sin ” as a curious survival of antiquity, as
if it were not in both Bible and Theology. An inquest
was recently held on a poor lady who died of the belief
that she had committed that Scriptural sin, and a leading
*
newspaper recommends the seaside for such diseases.
It also says such persons should be surrounded by
friendship and love. Exactly so. Like Alcestis they
are under the dark, deadly shadow of some heartless,
though happily imaginary, deity or demon—some
phantom of the terrors in nature,—and like Alcestis
they are to be brought from that region of shadows by
such love as dwells in human hearts.
* See Daily News, January 19th, 1877.
�All this means a new religion subtilely penetrating,
widely transfusing, the whole heart and brain of
Society. Mankind are saved by a divine humanity.
This is what our ancestors tried to express, as they
fled from gods of the storm to deities of love, incarnate
in human hearts,-—-born of human mothers that they
may bear a maternal tenderness to meet the needs of
a humanity born of woman. “ Had men been angels,”
says the Koran, “ we had sent them an angel out of
heaven; but we have sent them a man like themselves.”
All the incarnations believed in—Vishnu, Krishna,
Christ—meant the universal love recognised in human
love, as the sun might sign its course on a dial. Omar
Kheyam said, “ Diversity of Worship has divided the
human race into seventy-two nations ; from among all
their doctrines I have selected one—Divine Love.
And now, seven centuries after him, the civilised
world is making the same selection. It is quietly
hiding out of sight, secretly burying, the dismal
dogmas of divine wrath.
But we must take warning by the fact that this pro
cess has been gone through before our time j it has
been gone through again and again, but in every case
has been followed by relapse. Every bright incarna
tion marks a period when the human heart rebelled
against some heavenly tyrant; but invariably has the
new form been coerced into the vesture of the old, and
the fallen thunderbolts pressed back into his hand-
�I4
And this has always been done by one and the same
power—that of self-interested priesthood. No priest
hood can be strong except through fear. Many ages
have proved that. To cultivate religious fear has
always been their life in the past ; and now, when the
community has outgrown infra-natural fears—at least
in civilised centres—-they must invent some new kind
of terror, or else abdicate. The investment in Chris
tianity is too great for such abdication in this country,
and so the priestly interest is busily conjuring up
phantoms of another—a social—kind. It is declared
that all morality depends upon churches and sects.
There is still enough superstition to influence women
■and children, and this, we are told, must be carefully
retained and fostered, or else men will break all restraints
and carry society to rack and ruin. We are warned
that our institutions are all built up together like an
arch, Christianity among them ; and if one stone gives
way all the rest will tumble.
The only dark feature of our age is the spread of
this guilty notion, that falsehood is essential to the
welfare of human society. It is just that hypocrisy
which really endangers society. If ever the loyalty of
the people to law fails, it will be because the law insists
on maintaining proven error, and on turning the means
of education and happiness to the repression of science
under superstition.
That the social edifice needs pious fraud to support
�it is the last superstition surviving among the educated
and it is that we have mainly to combat.
And neither Hercules or Christ ever had a more
monstrous thing to encounter. To identify the interests
of superstition with those of social morality is not
mere atheism, it is antitheism; it is not mere belief
that there is no God; it is going against God : it is
pitting falsehood against truth—upholding darkness
against light—ascribing to ignorance more potency
than right knowledge : it is to declare a universe whose
every corner-stone is a lie !
The only saving faith of to-day is a faith that right
can never do wrong, that truth can never misguide
those who trust in it. The absence of this faith is the
only scepticism of our time worth a moment’s con
cern. The downfall of Jehovah, or the Trinity, is no
more than the vanishing away of Jupiter and Diana
who preceded them. Our posterity will witness the
performance of “ Paradise Lost ” as calmly as we now
do the same plot in the play of Alcestis These things
will pass away. But human society will not pass away;
the habit of mind—whether it be truthful or untruth
ful ; the human character—-whether it be faithful or
faithless ;—these will not pass away. We are to-day
weaving the destinies of the future, and every false
rotten thread we weave in will tell in the woof. We
are weaving not for our own race alone, but for
Humanity. As the priestly frauds of seventeen centuries
�i6
-ago are fettering millions to-day—among them many
of our own friends, and ourselves more than we know
—so will every lie sustained to-day bequeath a chain
to those who come after us. Is Humanity nothing to
us ? Then may we creep through our little conven
tional life, enjoy its petty rewards; but it will still be
true that he who has not known the love of Humanity,
nor felt its inspiration, has missed and lost the great
gospel of his time.
We must learn to read these ever new, though most
ancient, revelations of the life in nature to be unfolded
through man. Long ago has Alcestis been set to the
still sad music of humanity, for those who can listen
deep. All around us there is a Hades, and many
there be that go in thereat. Even while we claim
the triumphs of reason, and mark the skulking retreat
of dogmatic phantoms waylaid by the morn, the shadow
falls again upon us from the miasma of moral infidelity.
Out of it darts the double-tongue, striking at the heart
of all manly character. This is the Inferno of those
who see the truth, and applaud when it confronts the
wrongs of distant ages, but before the errors of
to-day cringe and crawl, and have one tongue for
the conventional, another for the secret audience.
Even honest ritualism is better than this unfaithful
rationalism.
Each manly heart has an Alcestis to deliver. Each
must combat with Death,—whether it be the skeleton
�!7
-•arms of a dead creed holding the mind in deadly
grip of fear; or be it the moral death which has
cheated our brother of his soul, and left him the
social simulacrum of a man.
It does not require of us the might of Hercules,
nor cost the blood of Christ, to make some rescues
at least from the dark abodes of faithlessness and fear;
but it does require still that we shall be filled with
■divine love, that we shall be animated by that alone,
till in our human hearts there flame a passion for saving
men, women and children from the bondage of fear
and the degradation of falsehood.
��
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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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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Alcestis in England : a discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, January 21 1877
Creator
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CONWAY, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 17 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Includes a bibliographical reference.
Publisher
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1877]
Identifier
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G3334
Subject
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Free thought
Mythology
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 (Alcestis in England : a discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, January 21 1877), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Belief and Doubt
Drama-Greek
Faith and Reason-Christianity
Free Thought
Greek literature
Morris Tracts