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 'I 
 
 THE FATHERS OF JESUS
 
 THE FATHERS OF JESUS 
 
 BY 
 
 KENINGALE COOK, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1886
 
 (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THOUGH it is said that one who regards the wind will 
 never sow, yet there are times and seasons which it is 
 well to observe. The date of the constitution of a 
 new Court of Parliament, established, if not upon the 
 best and surest foundations, at least upon the widest, 
 seems to offer a favourable occasion for the appearance 
 of such a work as the present. 
 
 One who gives an equal ear to the voices in the 
 air, will learn that, among other topics which excite 
 men's minds, the question of the disestablishment of 
 the English Church is raised. Somewhat confusedly, 
 he will gather- 
 That " it would be a gigantic operation " (Mr. Gladstone). 
 That " it would involve an enormous loss to the moral stability of the 
 whole empire " (Bishop of Salisbury). 
 
 That " it would prelude the downfall of much that is greatest and 
 best in England" (Lord Tennyson). 
 
 That " the clergy have, unhappily for themselves, chosen to identify 
 themselves and their cause, in the bitterest temper, with the fortunes of a 
 political party and a social caste which has been proved to represent the
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 minority of the people, and from whom political power has departed " 
 (Sir W. Vernon Harcourt). 
 
 That disestablishment would " pauperize the priesthood, and paganize 
 the people " (Bishop of Lincoln, 1877). 
 
 That it would "extend education." 
 
 That it would " leave a fair field in which the sects may compete for * 
 the glory of converting England." 
 
 That it would " arouse the latent energies of the Church ; " that it 
 would " cripple the Church for the present, and make it doubly strong in 
 the future." 
 
 That it would elevate neglected curates into the chosen ones of their 
 congregations. 
 
 That "the agricultural labourer resents, and justly, his virtual 
 degradation in the Church which is his own " (Bishop of Chichester). 
 
 That Church Reform would "make the English Church again an 
 integral portion of the national life." 
 
 Before it is decided to cast adrift from the national 
 order and governance an institution of great bulk and 
 power, to launch it upon a sectarian, and possibly a 
 reactionary career, there are probably many millions 
 of words to be said. 
 
 The question is stated to be outside of the sphere 
 of practical politics for the moment ; but it is at least 
 within the scope of political diversions, for both parties 
 have been playing at battledoor and shuttlecock with 
 it. Furthermore, mooted questions do not now wait 
 a century for solution. A statesman, when he says, 
 " We see our way for five years," appears to think that 
 he is speaking of a long period of time, and is content 
 to leave to others to find mops for the deluge that 
 may come a year or two later. 
 
 In the brief breathing time before the grapple of
 
 PREFACE. Vii 
 
 the champions of privilege and secularism, it would 
 seem a wise step for clerics and laymen alike ' to study 
 not only what ecclesiastical functions and powers the 
 future will leave in the hands which at present hold 
 them, but also what elements of their doctrine will 
 stand, what are true and vital and worth the holding. 
 
 A fair investigation of the groundworks and mean- 
 ing of the faith might tend, on the one hand, to allay 
 the oppositions of privilege and sectarianism ; and on 
 the other, to refound a truly nationalized Church upon 
 the broader and more lasting basis of the religious 
 impulse which is to be found in the heart of all con- 
 ditions of men. 
 
 To abandon untenable claims to the possession 
 of an exclusive doctrine of salvation, and relax the 
 constraining shackles of a defunct orthodoxy, would 
 stimulate the pursuit of truth, and open the reformed 
 Church to worthy men who at present shrink from 
 the make-believe of subscription to doctrines which 
 cannot face the light. 
 
 The position as premier Bishop of the much- 
 abused heretic of five and twenty years ago, and the 
 career of the lamented " Bishop of all Denominations," 
 are examples of hope, and an augury of what might 
 follow from appointing men of liberal mind to the 
 staff of the Church militant, and leaving the door of
 
 Vlii PREFACE. 
 
 the temple always on the latch to admit earnest work 
 and sincere endeavour. 
 
 When ordination is open to men of unbiased con- 
 viction, and place shall follow merit alone, the clergy 
 will find that, in order to lead, it will be necessary to 
 be abreast of the best and most advanced thought of 
 the time. At present we see the anomaly of the 
 leading journals and reviews telling one story, the 
 ecclesiastical organs another. The division into free- 
 dom and formula cannot continue for ever : the 
 pearled grain may for a time be kept in one corner, 
 the husk in another ; but where, then, will be found 
 the true and germinal corn, fit for sowing ? 
 
 Without disturbing the mechanical framework of 
 the Church too much, it may be possible to disestablish 
 the Thirty-nine, and other articles of bondage ; to trace 
 back ceremonies to their foundations and meaning ; to 
 disendow creeds of all but universal truth and ethical 
 reasonableness. 
 
 Our armed hand at present wields control upon the 
 oldest sites of human history : our minds would do well 
 to struggle to expand beyond the insular lines, and to 
 learn how to make their own, without fear, what have 
 been the deep religious thoughts of the world. The 
 present century, by patient and unassuming labour, has 
 discovered how much, in language and doctrine alike,
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 we owe to a chain of tradition drawn from the Egypt 
 and India of the past, whose forgotten hieroglyphs 
 and most ancient hymns are now before us to show 
 how far they are the parents of our speech and the 
 inspirers of our thought. We may learn at last to how 
 large a heritage we are entitled, as units of the human 
 family.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 I. THE BOOK OF THOTH. 
 
 II. AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 
 
 III. PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 
 
 IV. THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 
 V. THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 
 VI. A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 
 VII. THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ESSENES. 
 VIII. DID JESUS KNOW GREEK? 
 
 IX. THE TRADITION OF THE ELDERS. 
 X. A CONTEMPORARY OF JESUS. 
 XL THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE. 
 XII. THE GENIUS OF PARABLE.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH ... ... ... ... i 
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR ... ... ... ... 53 
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM ... ... ... ... 1 08 
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE ... ... 163 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS ... .. ... 281 
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO ... ... 326
 
 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 
 
 A GREAT engineering work, more stupendous than a pyramid, 
 has made Egypt a highway for the leading nations ; and the 
 unique agricultural position of the country gives it prominence 
 still, as it did of old. Simultaneously there has been felt a 
 vivid interest and curiosity with regard to the ancient realm 
 that was the sojourning place of the forefathers of our religion. 
 Now it is opening out to us its hieroglyphic stores of buried 
 millenniums, and disclosing not only the features of the 
 mummy and a puzzle of cryptic writing, but the thoughts of 
 men not too remote from ourselves for sympathy. At last, 
 now that the laborious riddles of scholars are solved, we are 
 reaching the wealth of the intelligent speech of our new-found 
 brethren in humanity, a treasure that shines little the less 
 clearly for having been buried so long. 
 
 " Whatever may be the antiquity of the Aryan mytho- 
 logies, the Greek, the Etruscan, or the Hindhu, it is evident 
 they only appear centuries after the Assyrian and Egyptian, 
 and had not been committed to writing till a period compara- 
 tively recent compared with their venerable predecessors. . . . 
 Babylonia has left behind it documents at least fifteen cen- 
 turies before Christ, and Egypt at least two thousand years." * 
 
 * S. Birch, " Record? of the Past," vol. x., Introd. 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 THE FATHERS OP JESUS. 
 
 To this long entombment it is due that the political 
 interest in Egypt and the philosophic interest in Egypt, 
 although both present to-day, are yet wholly apart and dis- 
 tinct. Ancient Egypt has entirely passed away, leaving 
 only its wondrous sepulchre. Of its sacred language and 
 of the religion of those dead men whose legended cerements 
 are treasuries of lore, Modern Egypt (with the exception, 
 perhaps, of a few scholars at the Boulaq Museum) knows less 
 than may be found in books that bear the imprint of Paris or 
 London. 
 
 As in this section it will be our business to investigate the 
 relationship of Egypt to those religious traditions which our 
 societies of to-day hold as their own, it is right first to endea- 
 vour to disabuse the mind of a long-standing and ignorant 
 prejudice. In that false judgment it is regarded as something 
 approaching to blasphemy to esteem any elder religion as 
 conceivably one of the mothers or nursing-mothers of our 
 own, and so entitled to our veneration and our love. All that 
 is outside of our own religious tradition and its Jewish stock, 
 we have been wont to stigmatize as pagan and heathen, if 
 at all regarded of God, regarded as quite secondary and un- 
 worthy. It has been argued that our orthodoxy, be it taken 
 on its lowest ground, and outside and apart from the special 
 privileges to which it lays claim, is even then at least tran- 
 scendental, whilst the outcome of the Egyptian and other 
 heathen priestcraft is but a gross mass of idol worship, mani- 
 fested in the most puerile and degraded form, darkened by 
 superstition rather than enlightened by true spiritual light ; a 
 religion unsanctified by the grace of God that is ours. To 
 persons holding such views it avails little to reply that much 
 of the orthodox system itself is but blind image-worship and 
 paltry lifeless ceremonial. They care nothing for differences 
 of degree ; it is difference in kind they insist upon. There 
 exist light and darkness, religion and superstition ; theirs 
 is the religion and holy, the other is the' superstition and
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 3 
 
 unholy. Upon unlistening ears, too, would fall the argument 
 that as, in spite of the idolatrous and ceremonial external of 
 the popular cult, there is and has been in the Christian religion 
 a living fount that has wrought its manifestation in pure and 
 firm and noble lives ; so with Egypt, beneath the gross and 
 external Polytheism of the multitude, may reasonably be 
 expected to be found deep springs, pure and undefiled, the 
 very mystery of godliness itself. Such springs, and such alone, 
 it might fairly be argued, if indeed they could be found, would 
 be so free from stain as to be able to have had any parental 
 relationship towards our own religion ; if such, then, can be 
 discovered, the ear of the wise should be opened to listen to 
 the sound of the flowing of the ancient stream. 
 
 The Egyptian may be thought to have been too religious ; 
 he spent little trouble upon his ordinary dwelling-house, the 
 temporary resting-place, but made the temple and the tomb 
 of lasting materials to endure for ages. 
 
 As the Hellenic race was supreme in generosity of art, so 
 was the Hebrew in tenacity of faith. Confronting ever the 
 wonted worldly ways, was the passionate, often sublime, 
 vehemence of the Hebrew prophets, who with untiring earnest- 
 ness staunchly insisted upon the reality and unity of God, and 
 upon righteousness or conscience as his way, and deeply 
 stamped upon a great poetic literature the truth that in the 
 doing of this righteousness lay the only course that could 
 make man of any worth or blessedness. This view of God 
 degenerated into exclusiveness, and this righteousness into 
 formalism. But whence was this religious tendency in its 
 original might derived ? what was its spring ? Was it wholly 
 a primeval revelation ? or, like the institution of Jesus, a new 
 birth that was in great part a regeneration of the old ? 
 
 Let us search the scriptures ; what do they say of them- 
 selves ? 
 
 " He shineth, then the land exulteth." 
 "Creator of all good things."
 
 4 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 "He careth for the state of the poor." 
 
 " He maketh his might a buckler." 
 
 " He is not graven in marble." 
 
 " His abode is not known." 
 
 " There is no building that can contain him." 
 
 " Thy Law is established in the whole land." 
 
 " Unknown is his name in heaven, 
 
 He manifesteth not his forms ; 
 
 Vain are all representations." 
 
 What scripture is this ? It seems familiar, as if it might be a 
 paraphrase of our Hebrew Bible. 
 
 " The Lord God is a sun and a shield." Ps. Ixxxiv. n. 
 
 " The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice." Ps. xcvii. I. 
 
 " The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens." 
 
 Ps. cxiii. 4. 
 
 " The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord." Ps. xxxiii. 5. 
 " Who daily loadeth us with benefits." Ps. Ixviii. 19. 
 " The eyes of all wait upon thee ; and thou givest them their meat in due 
 
 season. Thou openest thy hand, and satisfiest the desire of every 
 
 living thing." Ps. cxlv. 15, 16. 
 
 " He raiseth up the poor out of the dust." Ps. cxiii. 7. ' 
 " Thou hast been a stronghold to the poor." Is. xxv. 4. 
 11 He is a buckler unto all them that trust in him." Ps. xviii. 30. 
 " Gods wood and stone, the work of men's hands." Deut. iv. 28. 
 " He made darkness his hiding place." Ps. xviii. n. 
 " Thy footsteps were not known." Ps. Ixxvii. 19. 
 " Thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour." 
 
 Is. xlv. 15. 
 "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; 
 
 how much less this house which I have built ! " 2 Chron. vi. 18. 
 "A law shall go forth from me." Is. li. 4. 
 " He appointed a law in Israel." Ps. Ixxviii. 5. 
 " They [the earth and the heavens] shall be changed, but thou art the 
 
 same." Ps. cii. 26, 27. 
 " My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." 
 
 Is. Iv. 8. 
 
 " There is no searching of his understanding." Is. xl. 28. 
 " After the wind an earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the earthquake : 
 
 and after the earthquake a fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire : 
 
 and after the fire a sound of gentle stillness." i Kings xix. n, 12. 
 " Canst thou by searching find out God?" Job xi. 7. 
 " Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways ; and how small a whisper 
 
 do we hear of him !" Job xxvi. 14.
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 5 
 
 But our familiar sounding quotation, to which the above 
 and many other passages of the Jewish Scriptures show so 
 distinct a likeness, is not from Judaea ; it is from Egypt, 
 from the beautiful Nile-Hymn, composed long before any 
 known prophet uttered his voice in Israel. It is of the period 
 of a dynasty that, by the majority of scholars, is considered 
 to be contemporary with Moses. 
 
 The eminent churchman who renders it into English 
 (Canon F. C. Cook) deems it a relic of primeval Monotheism.* 
 It will suffice for an illustration of the Egyptian views in 
 relation to the central doctrine of the Hebrew teachers, that 
 of the reality and unity of deity. To the more pantheistic 
 conceptions of the Egyptian psalmists, both in their higher 
 and lower forms, we shall have to advert hereafter. 
 
 The following may illustrate the other central doctrine of 
 the Hebrew seer, that the main way of life and of God is in 
 the doing of righteousness, which alone brings permanent 
 blessedness : 
 
 " All men are in ecstasy, 
 Hearts in sweetness, bosoms in joy ; 
 Everybody is in adoration. 
 Every one glorifies his goodness ; 
 Mild is his love for us, 
 His tenderness environs hearts ; 
 Great is his love in all bosoms. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Sanctifying, beneficent, is his name ; 
 Veneration finds its place, 
 Respect immutable for his laws : 
 The path is open, the footpaths are opened : 
 
 * It is a question whether there is any certain ground for such a phrase as 
 "primeval monotheism," unless employed in a loose and general sense. "The 
 time has not come yet, it probably never will come," says Max Miiller, " when 
 we shall be able to assert anything about the real beginning of religion in 
 general. We know a little here, a little there ; but whatever we know of early 
 religion, we always see that it pre-supposes vast periods of an earlier develop- 
 ment." We do not even know who devised, and named after sun, moon, and 
 planets, the seven days of the week. The most ancient nations we know of all 
 use the same order, but though the tradition should have continued for a thousand 
 centuries, have we any right to call it primeval ?
 
 6 THE FATHERS Of JESUS. 
 
 Both worlds are at rest : 
 
 Evil flies and earth becomes fecundant 
 
 Peaceably under its Lord. 
 
 Justice is confirmed 
 
 By its Lord, who pursues iniquity." 
 
 This passage from the " Hymn to Osiris " is of a date con- 
 sidered to be two or three centuries earlier than the Nile- 
 Hymn, from which the previous quotation was made. A very 
 slight paraphrase also would allow this early writing to take 
 its place almost unnoticed among the words of the Hebrew 
 prophets. 
 
 When in our day of scientific investigation, which unfolds 
 the hidden scrolls of the earth's antiquity, and dares not 
 attempt to number the ages that have inscribed their record 
 upon them, we hear the words " primeval Monotheism," we 
 may be pardoned for wondering what they mean. Monotheism 
 we understand, but what Monotheism was primeval ? It was 
 not that of the Hebrews, for, according to its own narratives, 
 Israel was but a small tribe, little more than a family, when 
 it entered the gates of Egypt, whence it emerged, after a few 
 centuries of eventful history, a considerable people. May 
 Egypt herself claim that primeval Monotheism, or must it be 
 accorded to Assyria, to India, to China, or to the unknown 
 land of Eden ? Twenty-five centuries ago the question arose 
 which nation of the world was most ancient, and Psametik, of 
 Egypt, in whose long reign literature flourished, is recorded by 
 Herodotus to have made an experiment to discover which was 
 the primeval language, by observing the native articulation of 
 children brought up by persons forbidden to utter a word in 
 their hearing. The experiment was unscientifically conducted, 
 and ended in the children borrowing the cry of the goats, and 
 so making a word that was claimed to be the Phrygian term 
 for bread. So long ago, then, Psametik knew no more of the 
 origin of his race than we do. With the revelations of geology 
 before us, it is idle to speculate as to national beginnings
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. ^ 
 
 where we have no historic data to guide us ; the question of 
 " primeval Monotheism " is an impossible one ; we know not 
 whether the Sahara or the sea may not cover the remains of a 
 myriad forgotten races ; whether Egypt be the oldest link 
 with this buried past we know not ; all that we do know is that 
 it affords the oldest history yet established. There is no rude 
 nomad or tribal history of Egypt; nearly seven thousand years 
 ago, at which period commence the landmarks of research, 
 centuries before Adam, there is a reigning dynasty and a 
 capital, where is worshipped a demiurgic deity called " The 
 Father of Beginnings." Plato tells us (Timaeus, v.) that when 
 Solon had descanted upon the ancient mythology of Greece 
 to the priests of Sais, one of them exclaimed, " Solon, Solon, 
 ye Greeks are always boys, and aged Greek there is none." 
 This he explained to mean that they had no ancient doctrines 
 drawn from archaic tradition, whilst they themselves claimed 
 that there were preserved in their own sacred writings the 
 annals of Sais for eighty centuries. It is twenty-five centuries 
 now since this claim was made. 
 
 The still current pseudo-spiritual views of ethnology, based 
 upon misunderstandings of ancient fragments of allegoric 
 lore, we may dismiss from our minds as readily as now we 
 scout the pseudo-scientific view of the historian Diodorus 
 of Sicily, who affirms the spontaneous generation of mice 
 from the rich alluvial soil about Thebes, and argues thence 
 the probability of Egypt's river mud beds having similarly 
 produced man. 
 
 The " father of history " if modern research will still 
 allow him the title says candidly (Eut. xv.), " I think the 
 Egyptians have always existed ever since the human race 
 began." 
 
 If we turn from the speculative to the actual, we may find 
 a papyrus deemed by Egyptologists to be the most ancient 
 book in the world, or about fifty-five centuries old. Therein 
 Ptah-hotep, magistrate and sage, preaches as follows :
 
 8 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " Beware of producing crude thoughts ; study till thy words 
 are matured ! " There is no sign of youthfulness of life here, 
 there is neither suggestion of the divine simplicity of Eden, 
 nor on the other hand of the rude savagery of a race in an 
 early stage of development. The remark is trite, venerable, 
 cultured, and commonplace ; and the wise man who uttered 
 it must have been the heir of a civilization that a single 
 thousand years' growth would have been quite inadequate to 
 produce. 
 
 The ghostly presence of ancient Egypt dwarfs the Judaea 
 that we have made so prominent in our old synopsis of the 
 world ; the stately calm that dwells by the untiring beneficent 
 Nile puts to shame the petty cries of a self-assertive specially 
 favoured nation, or the so-called miraculous preservation of a 
 hardy tribe. 
 
 When the starving sons of Israel journeyed southwards, 
 and left their rude tents and famine-stricken fields, they came 
 to a land where there were mighty cities, graced with temples 
 and palaces, obelisks and statues ; where mathematics accu- 
 rately directed irrigation, and canals aided agriculture with 
 uses taught by the perennially watering Nile ; where archi- 
 tecture was not merely commissioned to provide shelter, but 
 made to subserve the proving of astronomical laws, and to 
 afford standards of reference for cardinal points and measures 
 of longitude ; where fabrics were made that for evenness of 
 thread would be the despair of Manchester linen with more 
 than five hundred strands in an inch, or five times finer than 
 our fine cambric ; a land where copper was tempered in a 
 manner beyond the knowledge of our northern foundries, for 
 it would cut stone without being hardened by alloy ; and 
 bronze wrought into blades that had the elasticity, as well 
 as the keenness and hardness of steel ; a land where the 
 physicians composed treatises upon "the science of the beating 
 of the heart " (Ebers papyrus). The root of our modern 
 chemistry was there in the ancient name of the country,
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTIf. 9 
 
 Chemi, Kham or Ham, a word supposed to designate the 
 black and crumbly nature of the soil, which re-appears in our 
 word alchemy, or the black art. Our very Europe is Ereb, 
 Greek Erebus, or the West. 
 
 In that busy land were storehouses of ancient learn- 
 ing, matured systems of ethics, and a priesthood as earnest 
 and full of religion as any hierarchy that has existed on 
 earth. Like all establishments, it had its evil side as well as 
 its good, its comparatively dark and degraded eras as well as 
 its enlightened and beneficent periods. It was well worthy to 
 be the nursing-mother of the Hebrew or any younger race, 
 and was this as naturally in religion as in language, where 
 may be found Egyptian roots planted in the Hebrew, which 
 have spread along one channel or another into our own 
 English tongue. 
 
 The rite of circumcision appears to have been borrowed 
 by the Hebrew, and certain other Palestinian tribes, from the 
 Egyptians. Herodotus (II. 36) speaks of the Egyptians as 
 " the only people in the world they at least, and such as 
 have learned the practice from them who use circumcision." 
 Again (ll. 104) he says, " The Phoenicians and the Syrians of 
 Palestine themselves confess that they learnt the custom from 
 the Egyptians." The rite is known to have existed in Egypt 
 as early as the fourth dynasty, which was centred at Memphis, 
 or some six thousand years ago. It was variously followed 
 in Palestine, being practised by the Edomites, but not by the 
 generality of the Phoenicians, the Sidonians, or the Philistines. 
 We may call to mind the observation attributed to Jesus 
 on this subject (John vii. 22) : " Moses gave you circum- 
 cision ; not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers" Who, 
 then, are these fathers ? Abraham was before Moses, and 
 perhaps one of these fathers ; as indeed one of his descen- 
 dants is named in the confession with the first-fruit offering 
 (Deut. xxvi. 5), "An Aramean ready to perish was my father; 
 and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in
 
 io THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 number ; and he became there a nation." But the fathers of 
 Mennefer, or Memphis, the relics of which capital city are 
 now nothing but funereal remains, were before Abraham. 
 
 The law of the Hebrews originates with Moses, and 
 Moses, saved from the sacred river by the princess of Egypt 
 when she was bathing, or more probably performing the rites 
 connected with the yearly rise of the inundation, was 
 " instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." He is also 
 said (Josephus, II. Ant. io) to have conducted an Ethiopian 
 war. There may have been troubles in the " waste Soudan " 
 in those days, and of the reasons for the flight of the great 
 leader from Egypt, the account we have is probably a very 
 imperfect one. 
 
 In spite of the stupendous exactions of certain sove- 
 reigns, it would seem that life in Egypt was comparatively 
 easy. The land needed not to be " tickled with the plough to 
 laugh with a bountiful harvest ; " the labourer, under a kindly 
 rule, might have leisure for a considerable portion of the year, 
 for the river, washing up rich silt from the highlands of Africa, 
 prevents exhaustion of the land, and the consequent need of 
 artificial replenishment. The Nile enriches year by year 
 enormous tracts, and so softens the land that in many parts 
 the agriculturists could dispense with the plough, and after 
 sowing the seed had but to drive in his flocks to tread it in, or 
 drag the mud with bushes. There was nearly always " corn 
 in Egypt." The climate was, and still is, a mild and dry one, 
 and the bodily needs are in consequence exceedingly small. 
 A handful of grain, a single shirt, a hut of mud and cane 
 sufficed for existence. 
 
 A strand, seven hundred miles long, by seven wide, 
 enriched without labour by the regular rise and subsidence of 
 the Nile, offered an unfailing means of subsistence to a pro- 
 portionate number of persons ; and that proportion of mouths 
 to acres could be raised higher than was possible in any other 
 country ; or, food being readily provided, there remained a
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. II 
 
 mighty force of surplus energy unused and seeking an outlet. 
 This mass of vital force was embodied in the pyramids and 
 other great works of Egypt. Such a country must have 
 offered great enticements to settle to our nomad forefathers, 
 and it is quite probable that Egypt formed the earliest settled 
 community that we shall ever be able to trace. Time after 
 time there must have resulted an excess in number. What 
 was done with the surplus population ? Diodorus Siculus 
 states that, according to the assertions of the Egyptian priests, 
 colonies had not only gone forth to Babylon, Greece, Pales- 
 tine, but to so many different parts of the world that he 
 shrank from recording them. It has even been asserted that 
 Egyptian emigrants colonized our island, ages before it was 
 known as Britain. 
 
 Though the actual labourer might receive but small benefit 
 himself, he was the means of great and easily acquired 
 wealth ; and in addition to the kings and the pashas, large 
 numbers of the priestly and literary classes were able to be 
 supported without the cruel drain upon a people's resources 
 due always to an inordinate proportion of non-producing 
 classes. To the ranks of the sacred scribes belonged not 
 only the high posts of the priesthood, but the more worldly 
 functions of secretary and custodian of treasuries, granaries, 
 and muniments ; the scribes royal directed the War Office and 
 the Admiralty of the river fleet ; and the general body acted 
 usefully as notaries, conveyancers, letter-writers, accountants, 
 market clerks, managers of linen manufactories and of stone 
 quarries, surveyors, engravers, architects, goldsmiths, sculptors, 
 physicians, school-masters. Functions were to a certain ex- 
 tent hereditary, but the sacerdotal tribe was not a caste, but 
 a class. Men of ability from any other social class might 
 be admitted to the priesthood. 
 
 Man in a simple state of life is an observer of nature's 
 methods. Among prominent objects of attention must always 
 have been the apparent sources of life, and the recurrences of
 
 12 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 large events. The sun is the apparent origin of physical life, 
 manifesting also a grand objective example of periodicity, 
 which makes days and years and seasons ; and marking out, 
 in conjunction with stars, vast circles of time, which possibly 
 expanded the minds of primitive men to large orbits of 
 thought, as the miracle of his daily life-giving fire disposed 
 them to love and adoration. Besides the sun, God's lieutenant 
 of physical life, sex, the reproducer, has received reverence as 
 the producer; the male element usually dominating as the sun, 
 while, from a similar attribute and similar association with a 
 stronger power, the moon and the feminine have gone together. 
 
 Natural observations and spiritual intuitions have been 
 joined in correspondences, real or fanciful. The pictorial 
 imagination has often sought to take the place of the spiri- 
 tual revelation, and has led the mind astray from the true 
 apprehension of the type. That the glorious solar orb should 
 be recognized as the immediate cause of the life of our system, 
 and so as a divine type, is a pantheism by no means incon- 
 sistent with the highest worship. When the priest of the 
 esoteric mysteries worshipped Ra, or the creative sun, it was 
 as a wondrous manifestation of the Supreme, or, as it were, 
 the Supreme in specific action. The aspects of divine benefi- 
 cence being manifold in their natural expression, the signs by 
 which the eternal God was represented were to a certain 
 extent interchangeable. God could not be beheld in his 
 infinity, but he might be seen through any attribute, which 
 attribute was adorable as God. This lofty and subtle Pan- 
 theism can only be held in its purity by the mind enfran- 
 chized from the rudimentary state and cleansed of the fluff of 
 ignorance and narrow prejudice. 
 
 The litany of the priest ran : 
 
 " Homage to thee, Ra ! Supreme power, 
 He who discloses the earth, and lights the unseen, 
 He whose principle has become his manifestation, 
 Who is born under the form of the deity of the great disk." 
 
 (NAVILLE, Litany ofRa.}
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 13 
 
 This was too metaphysical for the generality, who could 
 not take in so purely intellectual a conception as that of the 
 Amen-ra, or hidden fashioner, pouring his creative force into 
 the recipient unseen, and producing a semblance of himself in 
 the radiant sun. So the warmth of the poet invents endearing 
 epithets for the sun as a person, singing that his soul shone in 
 his shape, and that he dwelt in the interior of his dazzling 
 disk ; or, if of a metaphysical inclination, he argues that the 
 divine emblem was " born as his own son," that he was wont 
 to " address his eye," and " speak to his head," or, in other 
 words, commune with himself. And the popular imagination 
 demanded further substantivity and an extension of the con- 
 crete, and sought out many a quaint minor symbolism, and the 
 artist put it into form. The " beetle that folds his wings, that 
 rests in the empyrean," in some fanciful way, from rolling its 
 eggs before it in a ball of dirt, is made a type, and the bull, 
 as the largest creature known, is elevated to a divine symbol, 
 and both are carven images at the door of the temple. Minor 
 representations of divine attributes may be extended without 
 limit, according as the mind seizes upon one or another exter- 
 nal correspondence, or outward and visible sign of an internal 
 and spiritual fact. One part of Egypt feels pride in its 
 temples, where a sacred animal receives veneration as repre- 
 senting such or such a conception of divine power ; in an 
 adjoining canton the object of adoration is different, or wor- 
 shipped in a different form. Certain cities marked out special 
 triads or trinities of deity as objects of their peculiar worship. 
 Rivalry intensifies each worship, until the spiritual attribute 
 of the sign is forgotten. Each party has its god, the panthe- 
 istic fervour departs, universal religion wanes, and sects are 
 born which are both polytheistic and idolatrous. The priest 
 of enfranchised spirit sees still beneath the symbol its secret 
 truth ; to a partisan crowd this inner sense seems thin and 
 vain; if he speaks, it is to deaf ears, so the acolytes continue 
 to serve at the shrines, and the real magus and priest takes
 
 I 4 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 his place, perhaps sadly enough, at the head of the pomp and 
 show which he knows and feels to be empty. The ineffable 
 Amen-ra is forgotten amid the hosts of gods and goddesses 
 that claim to be emanations of his but are nothing in them- 
 selves. 
 
 At another time we find supreme power worshipped under 
 the name of Atoum. This was the red sun of the setting, 
 and the sacred aspect may have been derived from his daily 
 baptism in the horizon of the Nile. 
 
 " I am Atoum, Maker of the Heavens, Creator of Beings 
 coming forth from the world, making all the generations of 
 existences, Lord of life, supplying the gods " (Birch, Eg. Rit. 
 ch. 79). 
 
 A monument contains a dialogue between the deceased 
 and the water-god. " O Water ! father of the gods ! turn thy 
 face towards me. Thou art the water which makes eternally 
 young again." ..." I am Atoum ; I am the preferred of the 
 sun. I am the blessed Ibis. I am the Water." 
 
 It is by no means impossible that this deity, in name at 
 least, is the prototype of the Hebrew Adam, the root of 
 whose name signifies a reddish colour. 
 
 Egypt was pantheistic and polytheistic at once ; Pan- 
 theism being Monotheism made real, and vital, and warm, and 
 Polytheism being Theism frittered away and degraded into 
 countless superstitions and inanities. In other words, the 
 object of Egyptian worship was a plurality in unity, the 
 ignorant catching sight only of the exterior plurality, the seer 
 penetrating deeper to the interior unity. 
 
 The Nile with the Egyptians was as marked an instance of 
 periodicity and beneficence as the sun, and was worshipped as 
 representative of many mystic attributes. As in the belief of 
 the sages there existed a substantial sun that was but the 
 emblem or presentment of an unseen life-giving power, so too 
 was there a spiritual as well as a visible Nile. The first con- 
 ception of this was the water of a firmament that was supposed
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 15 
 
 to enwrap the world ; an abyss on which the bark of the sun 
 was believed to sail ; as in the early Greek tradition is the office 
 assigned to Okeanos, or Ocean, a sort of liquid space. We 
 moderns only conceive of the firmament as being aerial and 
 vaporous, and refer to the Greek Ouranos as meaning heaven 
 or sky, but Ouranos itself we must father upon the Egyptian 
 word Urn as, or the Celestial Water. And, indeed, we retain 
 the root yet in our English word " urn," or water-vessel, and 
 in other words. Ur, in Egyptian, signifies water ; Uri, the 
 inundation of the Nile ; Ar, Aur, Aru, a river.* 
 
 "The Nile-God traverses heaven; his course there cor- 
 responds to that of the river on earth," says the hymn. On 
 the spiritual or unseen Nile floats, according to the Egyptian 
 metaphor, the bark of the unseen sun ; and the disembodied 
 spirit vanishes from earth by that way, after the manner of 
 the sun duskily departing at eve. 
 
 One of the most serious and permanent of religious types, 
 in which the spiritual fact and its natural metaphor seem to 
 bear to each other more than a casual relation and correspon- 
 dence, is that of water as an intervenience and. ordeal to be 
 traversed between the corporeal and the spiritual world. As 
 in baptism the old self is symbolized as being washed away, 
 and the new self cleansed and brightened, so in death there is 
 the course across the river, be it known as Nile or Jordan, to 
 be faced. In this transit the most easily detachable part of 
 the still clinging earth-life is cleared away, and the soul is 
 ushered as far as may be into that state wherein there is no 
 wrappage of heredity or material veil to hide the real man, 
 the state of naked truth. 
 
 The notion of a spiritual fact will entwine itself so closely 
 
 * The alphabetic hieroglyphs for the word urnas run as if the roots were ura, 
 great, very much, and nd, water. These signs are followed by the indented line, 
 which is the ideogram for water. (Birch, 547. Egypt. Saloon, loh. Lepsius, 
 Denkm., iii. 134 d, and ii. 4. Renouf, Egypt. Grammar, p. 5.) The same 
 ideographic sign is appended to words based upon the root signifying river, as in 
 arun-ta, the Syrian river Orontes.
 
 i6 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 with material emblems that it is often impossible to discover 
 whether a glimmering consciousness of the fact first suggested 
 the suitable emblem, or whether some ordinary event of 
 physical life led the way to the idea. It may be, indeed it 
 often is, from the clear view of a physical fact that we are 
 enabled to proceed a step further to a conception of some 
 deeper truth. 
 
 In Egypt the burial places were mostly in the mountains 
 of the west, or sunset side, of the Nile ; and when a death 
 occurred on the eastern side, the ferrying of the mummy across 
 the river became an important symbolic ceremony. By this 
 passage was the soul, like the sun entering the underworld of 
 the west, typified as sped on its way to the unseen. When 
 a death took place on the western side of the Nile, the same 
 procession was conveyed by boat across a pool within the 
 temple precincts. 
 
 This symbolism of the passage from life to death has 
 a very general acceptation under various allied forms. A 
 correspondence, it is of course understood, is not a minute 
 picture, but a foreshadowing, a whisper audible on one plane 
 and in its own language, of what takes place on another, where 
 the language in not the same. There has been a readiness, 
 not explicable by the influence of the Egyptian ceremonial, 
 or wholly derivable from the Jewish imagery of Jordan, to 
 adopt the passage of a river as a type of the passage of 
 the soul into disembodied being. Even the Greeks, though 
 they borrowed the notion from Egypt, held the doctrine of 
 the encircling rivers of Hades, and took their silent boatman 
 Charon from the Egyptian Kharu, one of the imagined atten- 
 dant demons of the death-process. But they added the 
 strange superstition that those whose corpses by any mis- 
 chance remained unburied or uncovered by soil, were not 
 permitted to enter the ferryman's barge without previously 
 passing a hundred years in vain wanderings to and fro upon 
 the shore. The Greeks were imaginative rather than inspired ;
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 17 
 
 a more real reason for the spirit's wandering close to earth 
 would have been, not that the body was not buried, but 
 that the soul was ; that certain earthly ties were not put 
 aside which drew the spirit down and prevented it from pass- 
 ing through that river on the thither side of which is the 
 entrance to life. 
 
 Perhaps the root of this symbolism of water, whether 
 Nile, Jordan, or Styx, as a mystic dividing line between 
 the terrestrial and the trans-terrestrial, is to be found in a 
 very commonplace fact. The natural boundaries of primitive 
 peoples were mountains, seas, and rivers, amongst which rivers 
 hold a special place, for they are manifest dividers, while an 
 ocean stretches too widely away to allow the relation of the 
 opposite shores to be perceived, and a mountain range seems 
 less a landmark than a barrier. 
 
 In Shakespeare's time we find one and the same term 
 denoting both a boundary and a stream : 
 
 " The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns" (Hamlet, iii. i). 
 
 " Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me ; 
 Her boat hath a leak, 
 And she must not speak 
 Why she does not come over to thee." 
 
 (King Lear, iii. 6.) 
 
 It is quite possible that the origin of the ceremonial of 
 baptism is to be traced, by a gradual process of evolution, 
 from the ferrying of the mummy across the Nile. It seems a 
 short step from this to the " baptism into death " of the 
 author of the Epistle to the Romans.* 
 
 * Baptismal purification and after-death judgment are associated in the 
 following Assyrian fragment : 
 
 "HYMN UPON THE LOT OF THE JUST AFTER DEATH. 
 "Wash thy hands, purify thy hands. 
 
 Let the gods, thine elders, wash their hands, purify their hands. 
 Eat sacred foods from sacred plates. 
 Drink sacred water from sacred vessels. 
 Prepare thyself for the judgment of the King of the son of his god." 
 
 (Transl., J. HALEVY, Records of the Past, vol. xi.) 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 1 8 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 So far as can be seen, we ought not to regard the ancient 
 Egyptians as a priest-ridden people. We have seen in how 
 many necessary occupations of practical life the Egyptian 
 priest was engaged ; and in his more especial function he 
 was not only ceremonialist, but philosopher and poet. Such 
 natural outlet may reasonably be supposed to have kept the 
 priestly mind free from that morbidness into which it is 
 apt to lapse when the work to be done is all of an internal 
 character. The secret lust of dominance, uncoiling itself in 
 the spiritual sphere, is a more harmful evil than the rude 
 power of open tyranny. 
 
 There was a very wholesome feeling in Egypt with regard 
 to productive labour, though the law that enforced it was 
 armed with a sanction that seems to us severe. Herodotus 
 tells us (ll. 177) "Amasis* established the law that every 
 Egyptian should appear once a year before the governor of 
 his canton and show his means of living ; or failing to do so, 
 and to prove that he got an honest livelihood, should be put 
 to death. Solon, the Athenian, borrowed this law from the 
 Egyptians, and imposed it on his countrymen, who have 
 observed it ever since : it is indeed an excellent custom." 
 
 The condemnation of the idle to death might owe a sanc- 
 tion to the fact that in a simple community of labourers he 
 that did not labour was self-condemned to die of starvation, 
 unless, indeed, he were within reach of the charity of others. 
 
 This sorrowful result of idleness is referred to in the 
 Hymn to the Nile, the type of beneficent action in its fecun- 
 dating and enriching power : 
 
 " Idle hands he loathes .... 
 If the gods in heaven are grieved, 
 [as by idleness] 
 Then sorrow cometh upon men." 
 
 * Aahmes, a king who enjoyed a long and prosperous reign, the termination 
 of which marks the decline of Egyptian monarchy. He is said to have especially 
 favoured the Greeks, and to have contributed to the temple at Delphi. During 
 his reign Cyrus took Babylon, and after his death Cambyses established a Persian 
 Dynasty in Egypt.
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 19 
 
 One of the confessions of innocence in the Ritual runs, " O 
 Stripper of Words, I have not made delays, or dawdled." 
 
 Where religious feeling is pure and pantheistic, orthodoxy 
 is genial and comprehensive. To add a new emblem of 
 divinity to the pantheon is not to disturb the old ; it is but to 
 reveal another attribute of the unseen, which, when assimilated 
 with what men have felt before, enriches the conception of 
 deity. There were in Egypt and in Greece terrible degra- 
 dations of religion ; by those degradations it is no more right to 
 judge the purest current of their thought than it is to condemn 
 the inner spirit of our own faith by any popular presentment 
 in which it is turned all awry, and well-nigh upside down. 
 There were sectarian disputes in Egypt, but they appear 
 to have arisen from local feeling and prejudice rather than 
 purely religious difference or vital divergence of doctrine. A 
 main danger against which we have to guard in our estimate 
 of the glowing pantheistic faiths, is that of supposing that 
 they were doctrinal in the sense in which we have known of 
 doctrine from the metaphysical discussions of wrangling and 
 ignorant ecclesiastical fathers, the dogmatic bulls of most 
 Christian Emperors and Popes, and the paltry shibboleths of 
 zealous extirpators of heresy, and promoters of auto-da-fe". 
 
 In a general view of the characteristics of the Egyptian 
 system there stands out most impressively the importance in 
 which was held from the earliest ages the question of life in 
 the hereafter. Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to state 
 that " from Pythagoras Plato derived the immortality of the 
 soul, and he from the Egyptians." This at least shows that 
 the subject appeared then to hold, and to have held, as 
 prominent a place in the ethics of Egypt as is proved now to 
 us, who hold many centuries of her history within our reach. 
 The sense of vast sweep of time evidenced in astronomic 
 knowledge, and the acquaintance with the Sothic period,* 
 
 * The astronomic year is approximately of 365^ days, the civil year is of 365 
 only. In four years there would be a day wrong, which we correct by the extra 
 day in Leap Year, but in 365^ times four years, the days would come right again. 
 This period of 1,461 years is the Egyptian Great Year or Sothic period.
 
 20 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 may have led, we might naturally expect, to a conscious- 
 ness of the shortness of the span of earthly life, and hence 
 to a readiness to take in the idea of continued existence 
 after death. The enduring pyramids and mighty mausolea 
 represent the endeavour to outlive time ; and their paintings 
 and sculptures mainly portray the faith in the outliving of 
 earthly life, and the passage into the state beyond. 
 
 A prominent picture in a recent Exhibition of the Royal 
 Academy exemplifies a custom that proceeds from this ten- 
 dency. At the Egyptian banquet in the midst of the gaiety 
 is dragged in an image of the sacred boat of the dead, upon 
 which lies the figure of a mummy wrought over with all the 
 painted symbolism of death and judgment. Herodotus tells 
 us that as the servant who draws this strange burden shows 
 it to each guest by turn, he says, " Gaze here, and drink, and 
 be merry, for when you die, such will you be." There was 
 probably, in the bright faith of the Egyptian, as much joy as 
 solemnity in the address. 
 
 We may briefly sketch that mystic passage of man as 
 portrayed in the Ritual. In it we shall find much that yet 
 lives in our beliefs. 
 
 First we have the embalmment in the Mourn a bitumin- 
 ous drug or wax which converted the steeped body into 
 the almost imperishable mummy. Bandaged in hundreds of 
 yards of fine linen, placed in the case or cartonnage, over 
 which were inscribed extracts from the ritual of the dead, 
 and fin-ally in the coffin of fragrant wood or of finest stone, 
 the corpse lies upon the lion-shaped couch. 
 
 The solemn festal dirge peals from those that stand 
 
 around : 
 
 " No man comes from thence 
 Who tells of their sayings, 
 Who tells of their affairs, 
 Who encourages our hearts, 
 Ye go 
 To the place whence they return not." 
 
 (Transl., C. W. GOODWIN.)
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 21 
 
 The tomb is described elsewhere as "the eternal horizon." 
 At the funeral of priests and priestesses, and at a later epoch, 
 there is a more doctrinal service, known as the Book of 
 Respirations (translated by P. J. de Horrack), the papyrus of 
 which is found deposited with their remains : 
 
 " Thou dost enter the horizon with the Sun. 
 Thy soul is received in the barque Neshem with Osiris. 
 Thy soul is divinized in the Hall of Seb. 
 Thou art justified for ever and ever. 
 
 Hail to the Osiris 
 Thine individuality is permanent. 
 Thy body is durable. 
 Thy mummy doth germinate. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Thy body is rejuvenated. 
 
 ***** 
 Thy flesh is on thy bones, 
 Like unto thy form on earth. 
 
 ***** 
 Thou art divinized with the souls of the gods, 
 Thy heart is the heart of Ra. 
 Thy members are the members of the great God (Osiris). 
 
 ***** 
 Thy soul is divinized in Heaven, 
 To make all the transformations it desireth. 
 Thou comest on earth each day. 
 Strengthened by thine ornaments [of the mummy] 
 Thou art prepared for life. 
 Thou remainest in a healthful state ; 
 Thou walkest, thou breathest everywhere. 
 
 [The gods of the lower heaven speak.] 
 He is received in the Divine Nether World. 
 
 ***** 
 He liveth in the truth. 
 He doth nourish himself with truth. 
 
 ***** 
 He hath given food to the hungry, 
 Drink to the thirsty, 
 Clothes to the naked. 
 
 He is favoured among the faithful (or, living), 
 And divinized among the perfected. 
 His soul is received wherever it willeth.
 
 22 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 He hath received the Book of Respirations, 
 
 That he may breathe with his soul, 
 
 With that of the Lower Heaven, 
 
 And that he may make any transformation at his will, 
 
 Like the Westerners ; 
 
 That his soul may go wherever it desireth, 
 
 Living on the earth for ever and ever." 
 
 The following is from the Book of Hades (" Records of 
 the Past," vol. xii.) : " O God, who dwelleth in hell, who art 
 with us and the sovereign of Amenti, you who cheer yourselves 
 in your places, and who recline in your beds, raise up your 
 flesh, unite your bones, close together your limbs, collect 
 together your flesh, that the agreeable breath be wafted to 
 your nostrils, . . . that your divine eyes may glisten. See 
 the light by them. Arouse yourselves from your swoon. 
 . . . Their refreshment is of water." 
 
 References to reviving water and vivifying air, as awaiting 
 those who have crossed the abyss of death, may also be found 
 in Assyrian and in Parsi sacred books. 
 
 There are some physical tendencies in the thoughts here 
 to which we shall afterwards refer ; following at present the 
 ceremony. 
 
 After the mummy has been conveyed in the symbolic 
 barge across the mystic ferry, the next proceeding is the 
 dramatic representation of the judgment to come. 
 
 We need not dwell on the representation of this by 
 masked priests, who would be unable adequately to realize in 
 their acted parts of judge, accuser, mediators, assessors, and 
 recording angel, that wonderful drama of death which fills the 
 sacred pages of the Ritual, and is best enacted in the quiet 
 chambers of the mind. The vivid ceremony, however, with 
 its emblematic signs of good and evil, its scales in which the 
 heart of the deceased is weighed against truth, its impartial 
 judgment, its kindly mediators, must to many have been in 
 itself a more impressive sermon than words. 
 
 Thoth, known to the Greeks as Hermes, is the author or
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 23 
 
 inspirer of the Book of the Dead.* He it is who contends 
 for the soul of the departed, and justifies him against his 
 enemies ; he introduces the shade into the unseen world. He 
 is known as the " Good Saviour," and the " Lord of the 
 Divine Words." 
 
 He cries out, " O companions of souls made in the 
 House of Osiris, accompany ye the soul of Osiris with your- 
 selves to the House of Osiris ! Let him see as ye see, let 
 him hear as ye hear, let him stand as ye stand, let him sit as 
 ye sit." 
 
 Osiris is the supreme judge, and the soul that is sufficiently 
 justified to be allowed to enter the path toward him is already 
 accounted as one with him, and is designated the Osirian, 
 or the Osiris. 
 
 The Egyptians held the myth of a dying god, both the 
 Nile and the sun being emblems of death followed by resur- 
 rection. " They differ from the Greeks," says Herodotus (II. 
 50), " in paying no divine honours to heroes." The hero was 
 a supernal man who was imagined to be at length deified, or 
 rather elevated to be a demi-god amongst the stars. The 
 allegorical idea of the Egyptians was here lost in the Greek 
 poetic fancy. The tradition of Osiris having lived on earth 
 probably arose from the belief in everything great being a 
 manifestation of the divine. Before man was recognized 
 as being a manifestation of God, the name Osiris, which 
 was afterwards given to departed spirits entering upon their 
 heavenly journey, was bestowed only upon deceased kings. 
 In the sculptures the king is represented in the attitude 
 of a votary, with offerings to a double of himself, his human 
 character doing homage to the eternal not-himself that was 
 realized as dwelling in him. 
 
 Like the sun at its setting, the departed spirit passes out 
 
 * " The sacred books of the priests were all supposed to have been written by 
 Thoth " (S. Sharpe, Egypt. Myth, and Egypt. Christ.). The transliteration of the 
 Egyptian name of this deity is Tahuti.
 
 24 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 of sight through the gate of the west. He makes a way in 
 the darkness to see his father, whose beloved he is. He enters 
 as a hawk, the symbol of time ; he comes out as a phoenix 
 (bennu), the emblem of the great solar cycle, and so of the 
 soul's endless journey. As he wends along, towed in the ark, 
 or mystic boat, to the heaven, he worships the Lord of .Sun- 
 beams, who illuminates the unseen world, who smites the evil, 
 places the Osiris out of sin, and lets him be with the great 
 blessed. He prays the god not to dissipate one who is the 
 type of himself. So far proceeds what is known as the 
 " Manifestation to Light." 
 
 The consciousness of divinity grows upon the spirit ; he is 
 under order for the hill of the West ; the West is the great 
 future ; it is what the souls of the gods have had made for 
 them ; he feels his eternal life ; no element can keep him 
 back. From his heart is rubbed away the stain of corruption 
 and evil. He approaches the Pool of the Two Truths. " I am 
 the soul in his two halves," he says to himself, the interior 
 shrine-dwelling life being united with the other, or by a trans- 
 formation of two into one he is a completed and united soul ; 
 or he is the soul of the sun and of Osiris at once. The ex- 
 pression appears to be an archaic one, on which later holders 
 of the Ritual put a various interpretation. 
 
 There are spiritual dangers, however, awaiting him, givers 
 of blows for sins, and terrible beings from whom he has to be 
 protected. Of such we are told, " Those who are in the Pool 
 of the Persea are those born wicked, justifying what they do. 
 For the night of the battle their march is from the East of the 
 heaven. The battle is made in heaven and on the whole 
 earth," as indeed is always the battle of good and evil. 
 The divine protector is appealed to in most poetic language : 
 "O Sun, in his egg, gleaming in orb, shining from his 
 horizon, floating in his clouds, who hates sins, forced along by 
 the conducting of Light, without an equal among the Gods, 
 who gives blasts of flame from his mouth, illuminating the
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 25 
 
 world with his splendour! save thou the Osiris from that 
 God whose forms are mystic." Then follows a more realistic 
 appeal : " O Lord of the Great Abode, Chief of the Gods ! 
 save thou the Osiris from the God whose face is in the shape 
 of a dog, with the eyebrows of men ; he lives off the fallen at 
 the angle of the Pool of Fire, eating the body and digesting 
 the heart, spitting out the bodies. He is invisible. . . . Eater 
 of Millions in his name. He is ... in the Pool of Fire . . . 
 at the place of the Rejection. Every one who treads in it 
 deficient falls to his blows." 
 
 The departed being then passes through many stations of 
 adoration to groups of deities, which is called " Performing the 
 Days." He emerges with enemies thrust aside, pure, in pure 
 clothes of safety. It might be thought that his wanderings 
 were now over, but, indeed, his experiences are only begin- 
 ning. He has to be reconstructed. His mouth has to be given 
 to him, or reopened ; hands are made for him, and legs ; and 
 he receives his heart, which is at peace with him. A charm 
 is obtained from each place where he has sojourned in life, 
 and his mind is somehow reformed as he " shoots through every 
 place in which he has been : " a passage, perhaps, through 
 the illuminated sphere of memory. The faculties re-awakened, 
 they have to be preserved. His heart is saved by being the 
 heart of the Great One : " Giving my heart to the Gods, for 
 my heart remains to me," he cries ; " I prevail by it for ever." 
 His heart, he is conscious, was his mother, was his being upon 
 earth, was placed within him, and is returned to him by the 
 chief Gods. He adores the soul that still is his, that is not 
 separated. The symbolic presentment of the breath or soul, 
 the gast or ghost, is the form of a bird with human head. A 
 statuette of the Nineteenth Dynasty bears a dove with human 
 head and wings extended over the bosom, to typify the soul. 
 
 Again evil creatures approach, crocodiles and vipers. 
 They are repelled by the spirit, who proclaims that he has 
 crossed, and has been healed, and is one with Osiris, and with
 
 26 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 other deities. He is at once the babe, and, by virtue of his 
 sonship, the Great God. " There is not a limb of him without 
 a god. Thoth is vivifying his limbs ; . . . men, gods, spirits, 
 the dead, mortals, beatified spirits, illuminated, do not make 
 any attack upon him. He it is who comes out sound, Immor- 
 tal is his name." He avoids decapitation, escapes dying a 
 second time, eschews defilement, comes forth with authority, 
 the son of Truth, the substance of the great gods. He feeds 
 on celestial food, receives delicious breath, and his eyes 
 unclose. For the birthplace of the heaven he is bound, in a 
 ferry-boat of plaited corn straw. The sacred boat or ark 
 is generally represented as overshadowed by the wings or 
 feathers of two presiding deities, figures of the Goddess of 
 Truth, which remind us of the Cherubim of the Jews ; more 
 indeed than do the Kirubi, the winged human-headed bulls so 
 well known from the Assyrian sculptures, where they guard 
 the entrances to palaces or temples. The sacred boat, when 
 used in the processions, usually contained emblems of life, 
 and sometimes the scarab, symbol of the sun. In later times 
 an imprisoned serpent was the occupant of the ark, which 
 shows a changed symbolism. 
 
 To return to our celestial voyager : he finds the doors 
 of the heaven open ; he passes on, holding the sail of 
 the boat ; he is not drowned in the good water ; he sees 
 Osiris there ; the repose of the mild one is under the pools. 
 " Wonderful," he says, " is my growth and my substance ; my 
 spirits and the power of my hand. ... I spiritualize myself, 
 I live. ... I stand upon my feet, youthful through rest." He 
 prevails over the waters ; he has prevailed [by accomplish- 
 ment] over what he has been ordered to do on earth. He 
 prays to the Lords of Truth without fault, who are for ever 
 filling the cycles of eternity, that his sin may be rubbed 
 out in the Purgatory, that he may be saved from annihila- 
 tion in the Region of the Two Truths. The Gods of the 
 Empyreal Gate, the guardians of heaven, struggle against
 
 777.fi: BOOK OF THOTH. 27 
 
 him, but he is one of the illuminated spirits that belong to 
 Light. A flow comes out of Osiris to him, his shape becomes 
 that of his divine prototype. The redeeming son of God 
 incorporates him with his soul. He makes transformations, 
 he follows the noble road, having got rid of the sins which 
 detained him on earth. He can visit his mummy ; every 
 path is opened to the soul that is from the beginning, from 
 the reckoning of years. He seeks to be guarded as a quick 
 soul, and shut out from the shut-up souls and dead shades ; 
 he is new embalmed by the Heaven. 
 
 Still continue the purificatory steps that lead to more 
 expansive life. The deceased, according to the vignette upon 
 the papyrus, holds up the symbols of writing to the god that 
 inspires the book and prays to make a good use of what in 
 modern phraseology would be the " means of grace." " O 
 great Beholder of his Father, Guardian of the books of Thoth ! 
 Let me come, spiritualize myself, make myself a soul, prevail 
 and prepare myself by the writings of Thoth. . . . The Sun, 
 the Lord of the two worlds, has ordered me to do truth." He 
 journeys on, and welcomes the chief spirits who belong to the 
 servants of the Lord of Things. He is created in the heart 
 of the Great Gods ; he washes in the Pool of Peace, drawing 
 waters from the divine Pool. His inner life is presumably 
 represented by this sacred imagery. 
 
 At length the mystic bark reaches the shore ; he unwinds 
 the rope and weighs anchor, in peace. He cries out, " Come 
 come near near. I have come to see my father Osiris." 
 Every part of the boat that has come out of the dim eventide 
 of death, by analogy with the daily dying sun, out of the dusk 
 " heaven when the disk is red," then challenges the spirit to 
 tell its name or purport. The name of the hold is darkness ; 
 of the sail, the firmament ; of the rope, attachment ; of the 
 river traversed, the Visible. There is much in the illustrations 
 of this spectral progress, that is without life and meaning 
 to us yet, no doubt in part from our want of familiarity with
 
 28 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 what, had we been the cultured sons of ancient Egypt, we 
 were presupposed to know. The re-invigoration of the pre- 
 pared spirit still continues ; his limbs are sound ; the Great 
 Lady has sustained him as well as the Sun ; he has grown 
 strong to turn back the Dragon of Evil. He puts abomination 
 away ; he does not injure the true food of his existence. He 
 gains knowledge of spiritual beings ; he labours, and then, 
 striding towards gates that are closed, is acquitted by those 
 who belong to them, and approaches his house after his 
 labours to the delight of his two souls. 
 
 Soul with the Egyptian was a compound entity. Besides 
 the mummy, or shed form of earth, there was the spirit (akh ; 
 Gr. pneuma), which is the secret essence or intelligence and 
 influx of God ; the life (bd ; Gr. psyche), or sensuous vitality ; 
 the form (ka ; Gr. morphe), or characteristic individuality of 
 existence ; and the shade (kha-ba ; Gr. skia ; Lat imago), or 
 emanational form. What he hates, we are told, is that he 
 should " die a second time ; " and in opposition to this is the 
 " making for ever the time." The scene is now a wide space 
 surrounded by the celestial Nile : it is the place of Many 
 Waters ; the deceased is there in peace, navigating in his 
 boat, or acting as one of the wise dead, whose lot it is to mow 
 the giant corn, whose ear is of three cubits. He learns the 
 roads in this sanctuary of the dead, knows the ways of going 
 in and coming out. 
 
 The Osirian is now justified before the tutelary gods of 
 the regions of Hades. The scene still enlarges itself, and 
 the action becomes higher. We approach the Hall of the 
 Two Truths, and the majestic drama of the Judgment. 
 
 The Great God, Osiris, the Lord of Truth, sits on a lofty 
 throne, wearing a mitre of gold with long feathers attached to 
 each side, and balancing either way ; he holds a sceptre, the 
 crozier of authority, and the Tau cross, or emblem of life ; 
 and the flabellum of justice rests upon his shoulder. Mystic 
 serpents are in the canopy above him. He is mild-faced,
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 29 
 
 but inexorably calm, as Rhot-amenti, or judge of the unseen 
 life, of the hidden being ; he is the great prototype of the 
 deity known to the Greeks as Rhadamanthus. 
 
 Before the divine Judge are placed sin offerings, and near 
 him are seated the four mediators, or daimonic genii of the 
 dead. Beneath his footstool is the dark cavern of descent to 
 the world of chastisement. The deceased man holds up his 
 hands in prayer, and is supported by the sister goddesses, Isis 
 and Nephthys, the spirits of the upper and lower heavens 
 respectively ; each wears on her head the emblem of truth. 
 In front of the Judge is the dragon (the Cerberus of the 
 Greeks), guarding the mouth of the regions of death, and 
 taking the part of accuser or diabolos. Ranged around the 
 Judgment Hall are forty-two assessors, whose prerogative it 
 is to examine the prisoner and report, each having his special 
 province and function. 
 
 The following is the claim of a good man for gentle judg- 
 ment. It is identical in some points with similar appeals to 
 be cited in their place : " Homage to thee, Great God, Lord 
 of Truth and Justice ! I am come to thee, O my master. 
 I present myself to thee, and contemplate thy perfecting. 
 I know you, lord of truth and justice. I have brought you 
 the truth. I have committed no fraud against men. I have 
 not tormented the widow. I have not lied in the tribunal. I 
 know not lies. I have not done any prohibited thing. I have 
 not commanded my workman to do more than he could do. 
 I have not been idle. I have not made others weep. I have 
 not made fraudulent gains. I have not . altered the grain 
 measure. I have not falsified the equilibrium of the balance. 
 I have not taken away the milk from the foster-child. I have 
 not driven sacred beasts from the pastures. I am pure I am 
 pure" (Kit, ch. 125). 
 
 Such a claim had but to be verified. A large balance 
 is in the midst, presided over by attendant deities. In the 
 one scale is placed the conduct or character of the deceased,
 
 30 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 typified by the heart (or the funeral vase that held it) ; in 
 the other is the ostrich feather, or the figure of the Goddess 
 of Truth Thmei, the Greek Themi, the Thummim of the 
 Hebrew priest's breastplate ; as the Urim presents a like 
 analogy to the emblem of Re or Ra, the sun, or Light. A 
 small weight is moved along the beam, to make a balance, and 
 so determine how much the heart falls short of its standard. 
 Horus, the redeemer and divine son, takes the suppliant shade 
 by the hand, and pleads his merits before the calm Osiris. 
 Thoth, the deity of letters, as recording angel, inscribes on his 
 tablets the actions of the deceased, and presents them before 
 the Judge. The door of entrance is guarded, retreat is 
 impossible ; the trembling creature is before the tribunal of 
 infallibility, with his heart all open to view, and his every 
 action weighed in the balance. Osiris was president over 
 judgment rather than judge ; the recorded actions spoke for 
 themselves ; there was no impugning facts in the pure spiritual 
 light ; the conscience of the awakened spirit saw itself in the 
 true bill of the jury, and in the verdict of the balance. 
 
 The sentence of doom being favourable, the spirit is desig- 
 nated makkru, or justified, a word which is presumably the 
 origin of the Greek makar or makarios, which comes down to 
 us in the epithet of the Beatitudes, usually translated " blessed." 
 The virtuous soul is now admitted to the heavenly regions, 
 before the entrance to which sits Harpakrut Horus the child, 
 the Greek Harpocrates, the type of youth and renewal of life ; 
 his finger on his lip, in symbol, not of secrecy, but of infancy. 
 
 Of these heavenly regions there were extended and varied 
 ideas : there was within those realms a field of rest extending 
 itself at the word of " the Majesty of the God ; " there plants 
 grew, and the name of the field was Aahlu, which is familiar to 
 us in the word Elysium. 
 
 On the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah there is a repre- 
 sentation of this judgment of the dead. The soul of a wicked 
 man is being sent to inhabit the body of a pig ; the Egyptian
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 31 
 
 view as to which animal is manifest from the phrase found in 
 the Ritual, " the abomination of a great pig." On a papyrus 
 a soul is similarly portrayed as being sent into the body of a 
 ram. Here we see an appreciation of the law that underlies 
 the theory of transmigration, that the human spirit assimilates 
 its form to its own ideal. The spirit is impure, it takes a 
 swinish shape. This belief was probably not unknown to the 
 Jews ; indeed, we have proof that they discussed the question 
 of the effect upon the condition of a man's life of his pre- 
 existent qualities. It would seem not unlikely, then, that the 
 doctrine may have had to do with the growth of the strange 
 legend of the Gospel of the flight of a flock of demons into the 
 bodies of a herd of swine. If in Egypt a man accidentally 
 touched a pig, we are told by Herodotus that he straightway 
 rushed into the river to cleanse himself. 
 
 When the soul, unworthy of the mansions of the blessed, 
 has been dismissed at the Judgment to an incarnation suitable 
 to his propensities, the communication between him and the 
 place he has left is shown to be cut off by the presentment of 
 a figure hewing away the ground with an axe ; which may 
 remind us of another physical symbol, the " great gulf fixed," 
 designating the same truth of severance. 
 
 The sins of which the spirit under trial has to justify 
 himself, "when he has been made to see the Faces of the 
 Gods," are on many and various moral planes. A few may 
 be cited from the Ritual. " O ye Lords of Truth, I have 
 brought you Truth. Rub ye away my faults. I have not 
 privily done evil against mankind. I have not afflicted 
 persons or men. I have not told falsehoods in the tribunal 
 of Truth. ... I have not made the labouring man do more 
 than his task daily. ... I have not been idle. ... I have not 
 made to weep. ... I have not done fraud to men. I have not 
 changed the measures of the country. I have not injured 
 the images of the gods. I have not taken scraps of the 
 bandages of the dead. I have not committed adultery. . . .
 
 32 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 I have not withheld milk from mouths of sucklings. ... I have 
 not netted sacred birds. I have not caught the fish which 
 typify them. ... I have not stopped a God from his mani- 
 festation." To each assessor he proclaims a separate quality 
 of innocence. The proclamation of the virtue of the justified 
 soul is full of beauty, and may remind us of familiar scenes 
 of judgment in our own sacred tradition. " Let the Osiris go ; 
 ye know he is without fault, without soil, without sin, without 
 crimes. Do not torture, do not anything against him. He 
 lives off truth, he is fed off truth, he has made his delight 
 in doing what men say and the gods wish. The God has 
 welcomed him as he has wished. He has given food to my 
 hungry, drink to my thirsty ones, clothes to my naked, he has 
 made a boat for me to go by. He has made the sacred food 
 of the gods, the meal of the spirits. Take -ye them to him, 
 guard ye them for him." 
 
 The passage italicized, and indeed the whole action of the 
 Judgment, we may consider in relation to the august circum- 
 stances of the Great Assize as portrayed in the Gospels (Matt. 
 xxv. 31). The deputy King there says to the justified souls, 
 " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
 pared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was 
 hungry and ye gave me to eat ; I was thirsty and ye gave me 
 drink ; I was a stranger and ye received me ; naked, and ye 
 clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison 
 and ye came unto me. . . . Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as 
 ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto 
 me." With the latter part may be specially compared the 
 converse thought of the Egyptian prophet : He that gives 
 food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, " has made a boat 
 for me to go by ; " in other words, has made ready the way 
 of the Lord, or been the channel whereby the goodness of 
 God is borne in unto creation. In one we have the divine 
 assurance ; In feeding the hungry, ye fed me ; in the other, 
 In feeding the hungry, ye enabled me to feed them.
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 33 
 
 Before the acquitted spirit may leave the Hall of Judg- 
 ment, his knowledge or virtue is repeatedly made, proof of. 
 Each part of the hall, its door, sill, and lintel, refuse to open 
 to him, or to let him pass over, unless he tells their name 
 and meaning. The pure floor will not let him tread upon it 
 without the name or purport of his feet being given. Finally, 
 says the doorkeeper, " You have not passed yet, unless you 
 tell me my name." " Toucher of hearts, Searcher of the 
 reins," is the reply ; and the spirit, by the aid of Thoth, here 
 called the Reckoner of the Earth, is introduced to the regions 
 beyond ; past the roads of darkness, and far from the abode 
 whose ceiling is of flame, and its circuit of undying basilisks. 
 
 The Judgment, it would seem, is but the introduction to 
 the spiritual regions, where the new comer has yet to learn 
 to dwell. The purificatory process is represented as con- 
 tinuing ; there is a Basin of Purgatorial Fire, guarded by apes, 
 near the openings of the secret doors of the west. The spirit 
 is empowered to come in and go forth at. will, severed as he is 
 from earth, with faults obliterated and sins dissipated that 
 detained him. By reason of this purity, " His soul is as a 
 smoke against the devourer of bodies of the dead, flying 
 over the dead, hidden from the sufifocaters." Onward " the 
 deceased passes ; open ye the gates of the gateway, prepare 
 ye his hall when he comes. Justify ye his words against his 
 accusers. There is given him the food of the Gods of the 
 Gate. There has been made for him the head attire which 
 belongs to him, as dwelling in the hidden place, as image of 
 the great waters, true soul of a created spirit." 
 
 There follows "The Passage to the Sun," "the book of 
 vivifying the soul for ever." " The Osiris serves the Sun ; . . . 
 there are no shades where he is. ... He does not walk in 
 the Valley of Darkness, he does not go in the Pool of the 
 Damned. He is not in the fissure a moment. He knows no 
 terror in the place in which he is." He daily overthrows the 
 seductive serpent of evil, by the aid of the deity of redemption, 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE FATHERS OP JESUS. 
 
 and the goddess of the vault of heaven, who strengthens him 
 with the water of life and celestial food. 
 
 He is made to approach to see his house in Hades ; he is 
 like the Sun, and is seen as the Sun's boatman. The beings 
 of light protect him ; when attack is made against him, and 
 his heart fails, support is given to him. His enemies are gods, 
 spirits of the dead ; " he makes his way, he tows thy boat, his 
 actions are thy actions (the Sun's)," so that there is nothing of 
 earth for god or spirit to attack, nothing of death for the 
 dead souls to draw down to themselves. The disk of the sun 
 is often represented as his eye, and similarly the spirit of the 
 individual is regarded as an eye. [Compare, " If thine eye be 
 single, thy whole body shall be full of light."] " His eye [his 
 spirit] i^is at peace in its place ; . . . the person of the Eye is 
 then before the Gods. The person shines as he did at first. . . . 
 The eye having been veiled before the Lord of that Land (the 
 land of Eternal Birth) it has been made full, and at peace." 
 
 There is held festival of the names of the gods, which the 
 spirit has to learn ; and he is prepared to know Osiris in every 
 place, under his different names or signs. In the House of 
 Osiris are seven halls, and the names of these must be known, 
 as they only admit of entrance to certain qualities of spirit. 
 The descriptions are pregnant with meaning. The first is 
 typified as the overthrower of numerous forms ; perhaps 
 signifying that every shell and subterfuge has to be thrown 
 away, and the inner spirit to be clearly manifested as it 
 is. The name written on one hall is Babble ; beyond which 
 doubtless many for long fail to pass. On another is the 
 legend " Great Stopper of the Vain." 
 
 The spirit enters " the beginning of the gates of the Aahlu 
 [Elysium], or the abode of Osiris " gates of the meek-hearted. 
 An appropriate deity holds a double sword at each gate. 
 The name of these guardians is " Terrible ; " one of them the 
 spirit addresses as follows : " The fire which burns inex- 
 tinguishably, . . . the heat which prepares annihilation, run-
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 35 
 
 ning to kill ; no salvation, no passing over from its bind- 
 ing is thy name." But the spirit anoints himself with the 
 ambrosia of life of the divine limbs, wraps himself in a pure, 
 white linen garment, holds a stem of a palm-tree, and, purified, 
 proceeds. Spells which imply spiritual knowledge and bap- 
 tismal purifications which by cleansing justify, are his way 
 of power. 
 
 He learns to traverse even the secret places of the valleys 
 of hell, and to prevail against the evils, though not without 
 many a prayer drawn forth by numerous terrors. There is 
 " the Place of Waters ; none of the dead can stand in it. Its 
 water is of fire, its flow is of fire, it glows with smoking fire ; 
 if wished, there is no drinking it. The thirst of those who are 
 in it is inextinguishable. Through the greatness of its terror 
 and the magnitude of its fear, the Gods, the damned, and the 
 spirits look at its waters from a distance. Their thirst is 
 inextinguishable, they have no peace ; if they wish, they can- 
 not escape it." 
 
 The action of the book does not appear to be continuous ; 
 we revert to the process of awakening the dormant soul. 
 " Isis says : I have come as the winds to be thy protection, to 
 give as breath to thy nostril the north wind. . . . Nephthys 
 says : The Osiris has been awakened." 
 
 Then follows " the chapter of building a House on Earth," 
 which cannot be such a house as we know, unless the mummy 
 is the refuge on earth that is signified. " Come ye," says 
 Osiris to the Gods who are in his service ; " behold the build- 
 ing of this house of this prepared spirit. He has come like 
 the sun, the same as ye have. May ye give him his speech 
 that he may glorify you as ordered by me. Look ye to what 
 I myself do." 
 
 A dogma connected with the mummy associates itself with 
 the narrative, but is overborne by a higher conception. There 
 is an air of pride in contemplation of the body which wastes 
 not while all flesh grows corrupt. The sun sheds its rays on
 
 36 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the mummy on its lion-couch, and the spirit prays, " Hail, 
 father Osiris. ... I have come ; I prepare this my body. 
 This my body does not pass away. ... I do not what .thou 
 hatest, but what thy thought wishes. No harm was done to 
 me when I passed through thy belly, receiving no impurity, 
 which thou hast given to every god and goddess ; every beast 
 and reptile, when perished, its soul departs after death, it is 
 empty corruption. Hail, my father Osiris, . . . thou dost 
 not corrupt. The eye of Light has not decayed away. I am ! 
 I am ! I live ! I live ! I grow ! I grow ! I wake in peace. 
 I am not corrupted, I am not suffocated there. I grow tall." 
 
 There is an orientation of the dead in his chest, which 
 seems to have more to do with a funeral ceremony than to be 
 an episode of the future state. The four winds represent 
 deities, and each goes to the nostril of the defunct. " Un- 
 known," says the Ritual, " is the extent of its mystery. It is 
 not known to rustics." There is a more beautiful reference to 
 the winds of heaven in the scriptures of the Zoroastrians. 
 
 We may conclude our extracts from the Ritual of the Dead 
 by certain words of adoration which the departed spirit 
 addresses to the great father Osiris, taking upon himself the 
 character of Horus, or the son. " I have supported thee. . . . 
 I have put forth my arm against the shamers of thy face. 
 ... I have brought to thee all fruit. ... I have given thee 
 thy spirit. I have given thee thy soul. I have given thee thy 
 power. I have given thee thy force. I have given thee thy 
 triumph. ... I have given thee thy victory." " The spirit is 
 returned to God who gave it ; " and the address implies that 
 whenever man works, it is God that is working ; what spirit is 
 in him is part of God, nay, part of God's life, and may be 
 returned to him with increase, to the enlargement of the 
 divine life, and eternal triumph and victory. 
 
 Another instance of this realized oneness with deity we 
 may find in the Inscriptions of Queen Hatasu [Eighteenth 
 Dynasty] (" Records of the Past," vol. x.). " Amen says,
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 37 
 
 ' Thou hast satisfied my heart always. I give thee all the 
 divine life, and all the divine peace which dwells in me ; 
 every power I possess, every strength which I have, and 
 every joy which makes me happy.' " 
 
 The following is a prayer cited by Mariette Bey : " I ask 
 thy majesty, in my faith, that thou mayest shine on my body, 
 that thou enlighten my sepulchre. Give perfection to my 
 substance, near thy substance. Open to me the doors of 
 the dwelling of thy inferior heaven, that I may go out, that 
 I may approach, that my heart may be pleased, that I may 
 stay in the place that pleases me." 
 
 Another prayer is for the souls of the departed : 
 "Approach thou to him. May he enter thy bosom every 
 day ! Give him strength to pass the gates of the inferior 
 heaven ! Give him the life which was before thee ; the 
 breath of the resurrection which is after thee ; the entrance 
 and the departure which are in thy power. He sees in thee. 
 He lives in thee. It is in thee that he will never be 
 annihilated." 
 
 Herodotus says of the Egyptians (Eut. xxxvii.) : " They 
 are religious to excess, far beyond any other race of men." 
 True religion is an ideal and the holding to it ; superstition is 
 a morbidness that hugs itself rather than puts out the hand 
 to wholesome work. There are traces, slight but suggestive, 
 of a gradual decadence, through growing ecclesiasticism, of 
 the Egyptian priesthood. The earlier temples had an open 
 portico through which the national solemnities were open to 
 the eyes of the people ; the later temples had a wall joining 
 like a web the columns that formed their front, and so acting 
 in a separative manner, as was probably the original intention 
 of the rood screen seen in our cathedrals. " Each Egyptian, 
 like the Greeks," says Herodotus (Eut. xcii.), "takes to 
 himself one wife only." In early times the priests were 
 married men, their wives often being priestesses ; and a man 
 was proud of descent through a line of priestesses, as through
 
 38 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 a line of priests. But at a late time the superstition of 
 celibacy found its way into their doctrines ; and, indeed, 
 from Egypt sprang those monastic sects of which, in another 
 place, we may have occasion to speak more particularly in 
 their relation to the followers of Jesus. 
 
 There is a curious passage in some versions of the Ritual 
 (ch. cxv.), showing the Egyptian notion as to the original 
 bi-sexual nature of man, which may remind us of the tradition 
 of Genesis : " I, Ra, appeared before the sun. When the 
 circumference of darkness was opened, I was as one among 
 you (the gods). I know how the woman was made from 
 the man." 
 
 In another place, Ra, as the sun, is imagined as being born 
 of the great mother Neith (Athene), the sky : " Neith, the 
 Great Mother, who gave birth to the Sun-god Ra, the First- 
 born, when as yet no birth had been." (Pastophorus of the 
 Vatican [Twenty-sixth Dynasty], " Records of the Past," 
 vol. x.). 
 
 There are evidences of great secrecy having been main- 
 tained by the Egyptian priests with regard to their esoteric 
 doctrines. Herodotus, who caught up from them a few 
 fragments of their lore, says of the priests of Heliopolis 
 (Ei-n-ra, the abode of the sun ; with the Hebrews, Beth- 
 shemesh, by a play of words corrupted into Aven) : " What 
 they told me concerning their religion it is not my intention 
 to repeat, except the names of their deities, which I believe 
 all men know equally. If I relate anything else concerning 
 these matters, it will be only when compelled to do so by the 
 course of my narrative." There was a name, too, of Osiris 
 that he would not utter, which reminds us of the superstition 
 prevalent among the Jews in the time of the translation of 
 the Septuagint an epoch of special Egyptian influence in 
 respect of the " I AM," the ineffable name of Jehovah. 
 
 Under the later sovereigns the Egyptian faith appears to 
 have lost its simple character, and to have intimately united
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 39 
 
 with foreign thought, the government extending an impartial 
 patronage to all, and accepting all as necessary elements of 
 pomp and of maintenance of popular power. The ancient 
 indigenous kings had a different mode of regarding religion ; 
 they were of the priesthood themselves, and had a single 
 heart to deity as known to their race, without the later 
 patronage of the churches for expedience' sake. In days of 
 such corruption of primates, the body of priests and people 
 is likely to grow careless and callous and sensual, while 
 the naturally religious souls react into some extreme of 
 fanaticism. 
 
 Of the Egyptian magic we know but little, though there 
 are evidences that it entered considerably into their religious 
 system. The inner sanctuary of their temples was a dark 
 room, protected by courtyard after courtyard, gateway 
 after gateway, antechamber after antechamber, from any but 
 the qualified celebrants of the rites. Who knows what mystic 
 ceremonies were transacted there ? 
 
 During thousands of years millions of human bodies were 
 converted into mummies, or resinous mineralized substances 
 that yet preserved their original organic form, and conse- 
 quently retained a certain electric life. The process was a 
 tedious and costly one ; what was its object ? what the 
 incentive to so universal a practice ? 
 
 It is evident that the Egyptian view as to the state of the 
 disembodied soul after death was various. 
 
 Herodotus tells us (n. 123), " The Egyptians were the first 
 to broach the opinion that the soul of man is immortal, and 
 that, when the body dies, it enters into the form of an animal, 
 which is born at the moment ; thence passing on from one 
 animal into another, until it has circled through the forms of 
 all the creatures which tenant the earth, the water, and the 
 air, after which it enters again into a human frame, and is 
 born anew." 
 
 Herodotus had probably a not very accurate notion of the
 
 40 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Egyptian faith on this point, but there is an evident aversion 
 expressed in the sacred books from the "second death," or 
 the being reborn in an earthly body ; though, with an incon- 
 sistency parallel with that of the Christian burial service, in 
 one passage of the Ritual (ch. cxlvi.) the deceased is repre- 
 sented as exclaiming as with joy, when his soul is re-united 
 to his body, that "he has overcome his bandages [of the 
 mummy], and that it is given him to extend his arm." 
 
 By very few persons indeed is any of the ancient magic- 
 knowledge now held in possession, or passed on as tradition. 
 An old gentleman, however, the owner, perhaps, of the 
 largest existing library of books on magic, told the writer of 
 certain real or fancied methods of power which need not be 
 named here ; suffice it that they somewhat resemble the 
 legend recounted by Euripides of ghosts whom the drinking 
 of a libation of blood enables to gather strength to speak, 
 and recover their old physical memory that the spiritual 
 waters of Lethe had washed away. Lycophron, too, one of 
 the court poets of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt in 
 a later period, tells a similar story in his " Cassandra." 
 
 On the Stele of Iritisen (" Records of the Past," vol. x.) 
 is a reference to food from which ghosts might gain nourish- 
 ment the "white cream of the sacred cow, on which the 
 manes like to feed." 
 
 In the "Tale of Setnau," which is a genuine Egyptian 
 relic, we have the story of mummies who not only converse 
 in their catacombs, but have even the power of emerging 
 amongst the living. The charm possessed was thus com- 
 municated : " If thou art in the unseen, thou wilt have 
 power to resume the form which thou hadst on earth." In 
 passages we have already quoted from the esoteric books, 
 there are references to the germination of the mummy, and 
 to the power of locomotion at will that under certain con- 
 ditions, is granted to the departed soul. We therefore 
 conclude that the mummy was made use of by the friends of
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 41 
 
 the deceased for necromantic purposes. It would enable his 
 memory to be still cherished by those in whom the presence 
 of the mummy kept it alive ; and while the spirit enters upon 
 its mystic journey, it has yet a habitation in the physical by 
 means of the embalmed form. In the eternal endo-physical 
 is its true home ; and there is its higher life : 
 
 " He hath received the Book of Respirations 
 That he may breathe with his soul." 
 
 The body exists, but he has left it, and its irregular and dis- 
 cordant breath, to enter the divine harmony of respiration. 
 The book is the symbol of harmony or perfectedness. 
 Then comes in, however, a more mundane idea : 
 
 " That he may make any transformation at his will, 
 That his soul may go wherever it desireth, 
 Living on the earth for ever and ever." 
 
 The mummy could have but slight hold upon the spirit, 
 could give it no true power, yet that little enabled them to 
 say that the spirit lived in the finite as well as in the infinite. 
 If it hovered about earth, careless to advance deeper into 
 inner life, it might be glad, through the thrills of the cord 
 of still existing union with matter, to be recalled by the 
 magician's rites, and to flash some kind of message along 
 its private telegraph wire to the earth sphere. The ears of 
 the ghastly electric remains, not yet wholly bereft of the 
 organic quality of man, could not hear, and he could have 
 no knowledge through thess rites of the events of earth, but 
 he might perchance feel such semblance of sensation as could 
 affect those undissipated organs. It would seem at first thought, 
 on following this hypothesis, as if to leave behind one's mummy 
 in a semi-organic existence of centuries was to commit a 
 terrible power to the hands of one's enemies. That soul only, 
 however, that was low and earthbound could be constrained 
 to stoop down far, and upon the spirit of aspiring and heavenly 
 quality could be exerted only a modicum of conjury, a feeble
 
 42 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 chain indeed after there had once been known the charm and 
 potency of other and more spiritual spheres. 
 
 Opinion on the mighty subject of the uprise of life after 
 death no ' doubt varied among the Egyptians at different 
 epochs. The most spiritual knowledge in its decadence is 
 what will produce the most degrading and materialistic super- 
 stition. The belief commonly held about the object of the 
 mummy is that when the years of transmigratory wanderings 
 were over, it might await the return of its soul, and further its 
 re-incarnation. This might help to explain the Pyramids, and 
 may be in accord with the statement of Herodotus ; but the 
 painting on the mummy cases, which represents the soul as a 
 bird with human head hovering above the mummy as it lies 
 on its lion-shaped bier, is a doubtful support to this view, 
 although considered to typify it. The bird-soul bears in its 
 grasp the character or emblem of life, and a sail or flag, 
 which is probably the emblem of breath, while Anubis stands 
 by in his customary attitude, as embalmist. It has been 
 supposed that the soul is putting back life and breath into 
 the mummy, but it is just as reasonable to suppose that it is 
 the spirit's departure with those qualities that is represented. 
 In another picture we have a scene of death beneath the 
 vault of heaven, and two presiding deities seated, solemnly 
 upholding the feather of truth, or symbol of justification ; 
 the corporeal body, painted red, is falling to the ground in 
 death, while the spiritual form, coloured of the azure of 
 heaven, stands upright in an attitude of prayer and 
 adoration. William Blake's design of " Death's Door," 
 whereby descends the worn-out pilgrim, who above emerges 
 in glad renewal of youth, is a close modern parallel to the 
 Egyptian picture. 
 
 But if the Egyptians held concurrent contradictory views 
 on this subject, they are no more singular than ourselves, who, 
 in " The Order for the Burial of the Dead," repeat in one 
 place a paean of felicity for delivery " from the burden of the
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTff. 43 
 
 flesh," and in another mistranslate Job into saying, " In my 
 flesh shall I see God." 
 
 The fashion of mummy-making once instituted, the process 
 might be continued without any clear reason but the strong 
 power of precedent ; and on this hypothesis we may be 
 prepared to accept the references that are found to the use 
 of the mummy, as, for instance : 
 
 " Saith Nout : O, the Osiris, divine father and first prophet 
 of Ammon Osor-ur, truthful, thou receivest the libation from 
 my own hands ; I, thy beneficent mother. I bring thee the 
 vase containing the abundant water for rejoicing thy heart by 
 its effusion, that thou mayest breathe the breath (of life) result- 
 ing from it ; for I give water to every mummy. I give breath 
 to him whose throat is deprived of it, to those whose body is 
 hidden, to those who have no chapel. I am with thee. I 
 reunite thee to thy soul, which will separate itself no more 
 from thee " (Libation Vase of Osor-ur, Saitic Epoch [Louvre, 
 908] ; trans. P. Pierret, " Records of the Past," vol. xii.). 
 
 " The chapter of the visit of the soul to the body in Hades. 
 [Vignette a soul flying to the body.] . . . He sees his body, 
 he is at peace in his mummy, he is not molested, his body is 
 not strangled for ever. If this chapter be known, his body 
 has not decayed, his soul is not thrust into his body for 
 ever" (Rit., transl. Birch, Ixxxix.). The concluding words 
 here imply a doctrine that the preservation of the mummy 
 obviated a second incarnation. 
 
 Again, in a much later papyrus we find: "This good 
 woman whose heart is wise, may she be counted as one of 
 the chosen that serve Osiris ; may her soul be restored to 
 youth with their souls, may her body endure in the depths " 
 (Rhind Papyr.). 
 
 The following from the Stele of Beka, in the Museum 
 of Turin (" Records of the Past," vol. x.), will soberly com- 
 plete the subject : 
 
 " I myself was just and true, without malice, a man having
 
 44 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 put God in his heart, and having been quick to discern his 
 will. I reach the city of those who are in eternity. I have 
 done good upon earth ; I have harboured no prejudice ; I 
 have not been wicked ; I have not approved of any offence 
 or iniquity. I have taken pleasure in speaking the truth ; I 
 have perceived the advantage it is to conform to this practice 
 upon the earth, from the time when action began until the 
 tomb. My sure defence shall be to speak it in the day 
 when I reach the divine judges, the skilful interpreters [the 
 assessors], discoverers of all actions, the chastisers of sins." 
 
 The Egyptians, it must be allowed, had a very clear con- 
 ception of right and wrong : the foregoing is an almost ideal 
 record for an official, the chief steward of the public granary. 
 It is to be noted that, though in the first person, the writing 
 is probably the tribute of family or friends of the deceased. 
 
 The tablet concludes : " May your soul enjoy the right to 
 go freely in and out like the eternal Lords who are established 
 before the gods." On which M. Francois Chabas comments 
 " The chief bliss of the elect, according to the Egyptian creed, 
 consisted in their faculty of unlimited motion in the whole 
 universe. The usual prayers demand for the deceased the 
 power ' of going and coming from and to everywhere under 
 any form they like.' " 
 
 Like those familiar to us from Hebrew sources are the 
 Egyptian stories showing a belief in the obsessions of demoniac 
 influences. In the narrative of " The Possessed Princess," a 
 little sister of the royal wife of one of the kings, we find it 
 said : " There is an evil movement in her limbs." A person 
 " acquainted with things " is sent for. The king orders, 
 " Bring me the scribe of the houses of life, and those acquainted 
 with the mysteries of the inner palace." She was found by 
 these sages, we are told in the most matter-of-fact way, " in 
 the condition of being under spirits," which were hostile to 
 contend with. A cure or exorcism is made, and " she was 
 right forthwith."
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 45 
 
 On the Rosetta Stone, a record of comparatively late 
 Egyptian times, or about two centuries before our era, we 
 find Hermes, or Thoth, the impersonation of learning, referred 
 to as the " twice-great," or literally, the " great and great." 
 He was afterwards more commonly known, especially among 
 Alexandrian Greeks, such as had so large a hand in forming 
 some of our theologic dogmas, as the " thrice great ; " we 
 may compare with this title the " Holy, holy, holy " that is 
 so familiar to us. 
 
 Shu is the deity of light, and an instance of the many 
 modes of personification of the divine existence in the solar 
 attributes. The Amen-Ra is the hidden source ; all other 
 deities, even the Ra himself, being a manifestation only of 
 that inner power ; while Ra, or the visible Sun, is still further 
 personified in his rays, his disk, his position rising, setting 
 in the horizon, shining below the world, or viewed in his 
 human influence. The expression of our ritual, " Light of 
 Light, very God of very God," has a ring of Egyptian meta- 
 physics ; and probably originated among Alexandrian bishops. 
 In Egypt the Divine Being is not so much God the Father 
 as a more remote deific essence, through the intervening of so 
 many deified attributes. 
 
 Osiris is the chief of the Egyptian Pantheon, the sun in a 
 semi-human form, and the author of natural life ; that spirit 
 of the visible sun being the emanation of the invisible Supreme. 
 Of this Osiris, Horus is the son, represented as the sun in his 
 mid-day power, and venerated as being of his personal sub- 
 stance. He has many attributes and characters, some of 
 which are not sharply defined from those of Osiris. He is the 
 symbol of eternal youth, as is the sun in its daily death and 
 resurrection. " The old man who becomes young " is one of 
 his titles, and he is represented as achieving impossibility by 
 treading under foot a crocodile, which cannot turn its head, 
 and so typified an impossibility. In the mystic imagery of 
 the Book of the Dead, he was able to make the crocodiles of
 
 46 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 darkness to turn back their heads. In the hieroglyphic texts 
 Horus is known under many names ; he is " The sole begotten 
 of his Father," "The Holy Child," "The beloved Son of his 
 Father," "The Lord of Life," " The Eternal One," "The God 
 creating Himself;" and in his relation to man, "Horus the 
 Redeemer," " The justifier of the Righteous." 
 
 " Horus, he is my brother : 
 Horus is my cousin : 
 Horus has come to me out of my Father, 
 He has proceeded from the brains of his head ; 
 
 * * * *^ * 
 
 The Universal Lord." 
 
 In the records of the simple Egyptian faith of the period 
 succeeding the expulsion of the Syrian invaders, when the 
 national life appears to have expanded into a special fruitful- 
 ness, we find thoughts that seem not rude and strange to us, 
 but homely and familiar. This was an epoch before the 
 influences of foreign civilizations, Greek or Persian, were so 
 intermingled with the proper tradition of archaic Egypt as to 
 make it lose to a great extent its distinctive character. This 
 was, too, the epoch of the Exodus, when the fathers of our 
 religious traditions were " learned in the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians." 
 
 Such hymns as the following find their kindred among 
 the works of the Hebrew prophets and psalmists, both as 
 regards simplicity, earnestness, and tendency of thought. 
 
 " Oh ! Amen, lend thine ear to him 
 Who is alone before the tribunal, 
 He is poor (he is not) rich. 
 The court oppresses him ; 
 Silver and gold for the clerks of the book, 
 
 Garments for the servants. There is no other Amen, acting as judge, 
 To deliver (one) from his misery ; 
 When the poor man is before the tribunal, 
 (Making) the poor to go forth rich." 
 
 (Hymn to Amen, Transl., C. W. GOODWIN.) 
 
 By substituting for the word Amen its literal meaning,
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 47 
 
 The Unseen, the language will become yet more familiar 
 to us. 
 
 The following is a portion of another hymn from the same 
 papyrus as the above : 
 
 " I cry, the beginning of wisdom is the way of Amen, the rudder of 
 
 (truth). 
 
 Thou art he that giveth bread to him who has none, 
 That sustaineth the servant of his house. 
 Let no prince be my defender in all my troubles. 
 Let not my memorial be placed under the power 
 Of any man who is in the house . . . My Lord is (my) defender ; 
 I know his power, to wit, (he is) a strong defender, 
 There is none mighty except him alone. 
 Strong is Amen, knowing how to answer, 
 Fulfilling the desire of him who cries to him." 
 
 What follows is more distinctively Egyptian, else this 
 might well have been the cry of some Israelitish sojourner. 
 
 The following is from a metrical psalm of a time pre- 
 ceding, perhaps by a century or two, the date of those last 
 quoted : 
 
 " Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage, 
 When we draw near the land which loveth silence. 
 
 * * * 
 
 He finished his existence . . . (the common fate of men). 
 
 Their abodes pass away, 
 
 And their place is not ; 
 
 They are as if they had never been born 
 
 Since the time of Ra [the Sun]. 
 
 (They in the shades) are sitting on the bank of the river, 
 
 Thy soul is among them, drinking its sacred water, 
 
 Following thy heart, at peace. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Not the least moment could be added to his life, 
 
 (When he went to) the realm of eternity. 
 
 Those who have magazines full of bread to spend, 
 
 Even they shall encounter the hour of a last end. 
 
 The moment of that day will diminish the valour of the rich. 
 
 Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start for the land 
 
 To which one goeth to return not thence.
 
 48 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Good for thee then will have been (an honest life), 
 Therefore be j ust, and hate transgressions, 
 For he who loveth justice (will be blessed)." 
 
 (Song of the Harper. Transl., LUDWIG STERN.) 
 
 It is noticeable how these hymns differ alike from natural- 
 ism, from what is called Paganism, and from the highest 
 thoughts of Greek philosophy. The earnestness there takes 
 another form ; here we feel the peculiar seriousness which has 
 constituted one of the main elements of power of the ancient 
 Hebrew prophets. 
 
 It will have been remarked how prominent a place is held 
 by the sun in the Egyptian view of deity ; and yet it would 
 be unfair to call the Egyptian faith sun-worship. What is 
 manifest stands with the Egyptian seer only for the border 
 or fringe of the infinite life that is invisible except through 
 myriad revealments. The symbolism of the life and death 
 and progress through heaven of the sun has been so intimately 
 worked in with the belief in the continuance of the soul below 
 the horizon of the visible, that a materialist might argue thence 
 that the course and renewal of the sun had suggested to man 
 a similar return to life of his soul when hidden in the clouds 
 of his day's evening. The argument would have plausibility 
 and nothing more : in every great race under heaven of which 
 we have any knowledge, there has lived the faith in the soul's 
 continuance after death, while the physical symbols which 
 have become associated with this faith have been widely 
 different among different peoples. The symbols therefore 
 are the temporary and accidental appendage of a permanent 
 instinct, which finds for itself in every grand analogy of the 
 natural world the best correspondences it may to the glorious 
 vision that is seen as yet through a glass darkly. 
 
 In referring to the faith of Egypt, it is necessary to distin- 
 guish the ancient religion, not only from the modern, but from 
 that of the period of foreign domination. A great religious 
 centre was to be found in what, historically speaking, might
 
 THE BOOK OF 77/0777. 49 
 
 almost be termed with propriety " Modern Egypt," that is to 
 say, Egypt of the period about the beginning of our era. 
 Then was Alexandria the main haunt and home of philosophy; 
 there was to be found the Greek dialoguer ; the Egyptian 
 priest, such as Plutarch saw him ; the ascetic Therapeut ; the 
 fanciful Gnostic : there met orientalized Greek, Grecized Jew, 
 and Judaeo-Egyptian ; and there the influences of all the 
 ancient faiths of the world seethed into argument and some- 
 thing at times not unlike spiritual chaos. But bright life and 
 vision were not wanting; Philo, in spite of his excess in hunt- 
 ing out symbolic senses, not only where they were to be found, 
 but where they were not, showed that there was not wholly 
 lost the glow of the Hebrew teachings nor the subtle influence 
 of the mind of Egypt. 
 
 How describe the influence upon human thought of this 
 hoary nation of the Nile ? The life of Egypt is the romance 
 of the world, and it is only as in a romance that even part of 
 the story can be told. 
 
 Manetho, the Egyptian priest of the fourth century B.C., 
 was taken for a fabulist because he gives a list of dynasties 
 extending over four thousand years, but has won more respect 
 as scholarship has advanced. It is partly upon his narrative 
 that the following is founded. 
 
 In the scorching plains, buried and forgotten, lay the 
 pillars of Hermes, engraved tables of immemorial date. 
 They bore upon them sacred truths, but the hieroglyph had 
 lost its clearness through time and decay, and the meaning 
 of the symbols had been effaced from the minds of men. 
 Some political trouble, or dispute between rival temples, or 
 some new tyrant's bid for popularity and power, had occupied 
 men's minds. Perhaps a natural calamity had occurred, or 
 the sanctuary that guarded the stones was laid waste, and the 
 elucidator of their apocrypha slain. So lapsed a time, long 
 enough to let the graven obelisks pass out of memory, while 
 the truths they had conveyed were also pushed aside and 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 made remote by other interests. The crystal tablets stood 
 no longer upright ; they shone upon men neither in the 
 letter nor in the spirit, being trampled under foot in both. 
 Long they lay unnoticed, unknown of, while Hermes, god of 
 thought, was a god only in name. 
 
 The tradition of a buried column feebly lingered on, like 
 an old crone that seemingly neither lives nor dies. Now and 
 then a half-remembered whisper of the lost wisdom would 
 spring up like a summer wind and touch a susceptible ear ; 
 but the world seemed too old and men too busy to make more 
 of it. And so for centuries. 
 
 Anon there came a stir, and this like a fresh wind on the 
 waters. The people began to open their eyes with a new 
 alertness, as for something great and strange to come, and to 
 discover that over the trite maxims of the priesthood there 
 lay some blight ; they seemed dry, conventional, and unsatis- 
 factory. Minds long confined expanded, and wondered where 
 they had been, and where they were. From a state in which 
 a revelation would have seemed a matter of no account, and a 
 man professing to be its bearer one to be scouted and mocked 
 and put out of the way, they found themselves in a state in 
 which the idea of learning had in it something acceptable, 
 and such fear as might cause the repulsion of its messenger 
 began to be held as narrow and cowardly. 
 
 Over the sandy plain blew the wind, making ripples like a 
 crisping river : some things it covered, others it bared. There 
 was living then a strange mortal known as the Son of the 
 Good Spirit ; some learning he had, and much thirst for it. 
 As one day he wandered with curious eyes, now turned sky- 
 ward, now seeming as if they would pierce and burn through 
 earth, with the air's breath fresh and delicate upon his brow 
 that an eager mind had somewhat fevered ; as the light of the 
 growing dawn swam serenely over the landscape, he felt him- 
 self as in the presence of some crisis of his life. But the 
 horizon was void. As the sun mounted higher, there was but
 
 THE BOOK OF THOTH. 51 
 
 a scrubby knoll, betokening, perchance, some ancient ruin, 
 that broke the pellucid smoothness of the eternal circle of the 
 view. It attracted him, and he went towards it to sit down 
 and meditate upon what was moving him. As he sat longing 
 for clearer articulation of his fervent thoughts, his hand fell 
 idly upon the mound ; his ringers played with the light friable 
 earth. Soon, as he dreamed, a thrill came up the hand as if 
 some magnet drew it, and there met his finger-tips something 
 defined like a sacred sign or figure. He turned, and the 
 magnet was exposed ; the sun's rays glinted off the surface 
 of a crystal rock, and glowed in a carven symbol on its face. 
 Ardently he explored further, and the buried treasure of 
 centuries was exhumed, the fabled pillar of Hermes. It was 
 almost illegible ; neglect had allowed the inscription to become 
 choked with earth ; the emblem and its significance were 
 alike faint and clouded. 
 
 The discoverer rested not ; he pored over his prize, and, 
 line by line, symbol by symbol, fought his way back to the 
 word and its meaning. After years of study he brought his 
 boon into the light : law and geometry, rhythmic lore, hymns 
 of the gods, the stories of the stars, the orders of the angels, 
 the arts of healing, celestial revelations and universal principles 
 illustrated by new thought, were recommitted to the people, 
 The ancient sanction was a dower of welcome ; spiritual learn- 
 ing revived, and the priest was once more an inspired man. 
 The happy messenger, the Son of the Good Spirit, was greeted 
 by the name of the second Hermes, and long revered for his 
 boon, the restoration of the ancient scriptures. 
 
 When he departed, it could be said of him, as was said of 
 a good minister of nearly five thousand years ago : " He had 
 protected the poor, and defended the weak. Peace was in his 
 words, and the Book of Thoth on his tongue." * 
 
 Plato knew his name as Hermes, and Livy as Mercurius 
 Teutates ; in Egyptian the name of the deity from which 
 
 * Brugsch, Hist. d'Egypte, i. 92,
 
 52 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 these titles are derived is Tahuti, Theut, or Thoth. Tris- 
 megistus, or Threefold-greatest, he is also called. Clement of 
 Alexandria discourses of him ; Homer, a thousand years 
 before, regarded him as the messenger of the gods and 
 conductor of departed souls. His symbolic images were in 
 the public places of Pelasgia and Greece, and took various 
 fantastic forms, as the idea of his attributes became varied or 
 corrupted. 
 
 The labours of the second Hermes were fading out in the 
 day of Manetho himself, and the meaning of the pillars was 
 hidden again under earth and the foot of man. 
 
 A third student of philosophic mind and sympathetic 
 emotion came forth and strove to renovate the Hermaic name ; 
 but the charm had departed. His books are extant,* but 
 about the time of his sojourn in Egypt, in an adjacent country 
 there appeared another Hermes with a different name. 
 
 A man came forth who knew the old story of the neglect 
 and decay of the life of the spirit under the dust and inertness 
 of matter, and warned his school, in order that nothing might 
 be lost through the blight of ignorance : " Cast not your 
 pearls before the swine, lest they trample them under their 
 feet and turn to rend you." But the pearls rolled far and got 
 beneath the feet, and the narrow heel of doctrine trampled 
 them, and ignorance brought dust and hid their clear beauty, 
 and mock pearls were thrown among them : and though they 
 are not wholly lost, they are, like the crystal columns of 
 Hermes, obscured and overlaid. 
 
 Whoever has the talisman to aid him. in his quest, as it 
 
 was borne by the second Hermes, may find some of these 
 
 pearls, and though there be among them some that are defaced, 
 
 they may yet shine as brightly as when first they issued from 
 
 the lips of the Disciple of the Light. 
 
 But until a true hunger and thirst excite men's hearts 
 again, the traveller in the wilderness does but scratch in the 
 sand above the lost jewels in vain. 
 
 * Hermetis Trismegisti " Poemander," " Clavis," etc.
 
 C S3 ) 
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 
 
 WE have reasons for taking a personal interest in the Aryans. 
 If we look for the traditional cradle of our race, a star over- 
 hangs the Orient. Our language finds its principal roots in a 
 spreading centre which is ascribed to the regions lying south 
 of the great river Oxus, and between Euphrates on the west 
 and Indus on the east. 
 
 As members of the Indo-Germanic family, we own sonship 
 to the Friesic tribes, who filled the wild fringes of Northern 
 Europe, and made our Anglo-Saxondom by westward inva- 
 sion, as no doubt they had made their own domain of Friez 
 and Teutonland by incursion from their ancestral east. 
 
 This outset of Aryan expansion it would be prudent to 
 style the beginning of a cycle, the dawn of a semi-historical 
 period, rather than the first colonization of a world. 
 
 When the noble nomads wandering further eastward 
 reached India (Arya in Sanscrit signifies noble) they found 
 rude darker races to subjugate. 
 
 Somewhat degenerated from their ancient superiority, 
 these conquerors themselves, or at least such of them as 
 remained and multiplied in India, are now ruled by another 
 and a stronger shoot of the Aryan branch which extended 
 itself westward. Notwithstanding many a fusion and a wide 
 scattering of itself by colonization, this Aryan shoot has not 
 perished, but subsisting in us makes up the strength of Eng- 
 land with distinction and unexhausted vitality. 
 
 The view we have expressed of the primitive Aryans as
 
 54 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the dominant race of an early period, will allow of room for 
 the questions whether Egypt is not older still than Aryana, 
 and whether the differences between the so-called Semitic 
 languages of the Phoenician and Hebrew peoples and those 
 of the so-called Indo-Germanic group are not differences due 
 to variation rather than to absence of fellowship in origin. 
 The hieroglyph and the oldest cuneiform have not yet been 
 fully explored and compared with other ancient alphabets. 
 
 A clue which fairly illustrates the ramifications of the 
 Aryan stock may be found in our word " wit," or " wot." This 
 same word is to be traced with slight variation through the 
 Gothic, the Anglo-Saxon, the old Norman, the German. In the 
 Greek it is a'Sw or ot&a, preceded by the obsolete letter -van. 
 In Latin it is video. In Sanscrit it appears as vid and in the 
 well-known Veda, making by a variation also bodhi and budha, 
 both signifying knowledge. Perhaps it is the Assyrian idu, to 
 know, or to oversee. In Zend it is the A-vista (vid}, the book 
 of knowledge. The Egyptian ut, uit, magic, has a strong 
 likeness to this root, and magic in the old days had not been 
 branded as quackery, but was regarded as a key of know- 
 ledge. The Hebrew, bda, to form, bdd, to devise, may perhaps 
 also be added to the chain. 
 
 To return to Anglo-Saxon, the same root forms the name 
 of the deity Voden, Woden, or Odin (old German wuotari], the 
 equivalent of the Hermes or god of wisdom. From Woden 
 it comes to us as Wednesday, the day, if it were not too 
 much to hope, of wit or wisdom. 
 
 Another root, which also signifies to know, appears in our 
 language in the verbs ken, can, con, acquaint, and know, and in 
 the adjectives canny and cunning. It is Gothic kunnan ; 
 Anglo-Saxon, can, cennan, and cnawan ; Swedish, kunnig and 
 kaanna ; Dutch and German, kennen ; Danish, kan ; Sanscrit, 
 gnd, gandmi ; Zend, hunara, Pazand, khunar (science), also 
 Zend vaen, and Pazand vinastan and ginastan, to perceive ; 
 Greek, ytvtWetv; Latin, cognoscere ; old French, connoistre.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 55 
 
 Egyptian, kan, ability, service, power, courage, khen, khennu, 
 khent, sanctuary, interior, concealed, khennui, intelligence, 
 valour, seem to be akin. From this root knowledge convey- 
 ing power come the words signifying king, old English 
 cyning, German konig, and possibly the Tartar khan, and the 
 Egyptian ken, kannt, titles. The prenomen of the writer, 
 which is an old East Anglian place name and surname, 
 contains the same root. 
 
 It may be interesting to add a few instances in which the 
 connection between the older languages is readily to be 
 traced. 
 
 Among Egyptian hieroglyphs may be found mds, anoint ; 
 masu, anoint, dip. In Zend mashyti is clarified butter. In 
 Hebrew and Syriac meshuh, meshihha ; in Arabic masih, sig- 
 nify anointed. 
 
 In Egyptian khab, Assyrian caccabu, Hebrew kohhabi, alike 
 signify a star. 
 
 We find in Egyptian makheru, justified, especially in 
 reference to the dead after judgment ; in Assyrian magaru, 
 obedient, happy ; in Greek paKap, blessed, happy, especially 
 an epithet of the dead. In the Venetian dialect the word 
 lives at the present day as maggari, an exclamation of good 
 fortune. 
 
 Egyptian kam, a reed, khem, the masculine emblem ; 
 Sanscrit, kalm ; Hebrew, gma, gome, reedgrass, rush ; Greek, 
 KaXafjLoq ; Arabic, qalam ; German, halm ; French, chaume, 
 stubble ; English, kalm, haulm, would appear to be practically 
 the same word, and so to afford a trace of a primitive rela- 
 tionship between Egyptian, Shemite, and Aryan. 
 
 A more singular word-history still may be found. Among 
 the deities of the Veda, which gives the most ancient trace of 
 the Aryans in India, is Varuna, the sky, and the god who 
 resides in the sky. It is easy to perceive the connection 
 between Varunas, the nightly firmament, and the Greek 
 ovpavog, the heaven or the sky, ouranos, which with the
 
 c6 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 obsolete Greek letter vau, might have been written vouranos. 
 It is not until we turn to Egypt, however, that we reach the 
 origin of the word. There the great water of the Nile was 
 worshipped as a personification of the beneficence of nature. 
 As to the Egyptian this mighty stream seemed to make a high- 
 way through the world, so was there imagined to be a splendid 
 spiritual highway through the firmament. Along this the 
 disembodied spirit was supposed to pass on its journey to 
 the Unseen. This highway was the Urnas, or celestial water, 
 personified as a deity of the sky. From this word, in its 
 Greek form, we have named the star Uranus, and we have 
 English words in common use which may remind us of the 
 Egyptian root ur, uri. 
 
 The link between the Egyptian " Urnas," the Greek 
 " Ouranos " and the Vedic " Varunas," appears to manifest 
 itself in the Sanscrit root vdri, water. As it would seem, it 
 is through ignorance of an Egyptian root and its application, 
 that Max Miiller derives " Varunas," the firmament, from the 
 Sanscrit var, to cover. 
 
 Etymologists may now attack the question : Which is the 
 original root, the Egyptian uri or the Sanscrit vdri? An 
 obvious reason for the greater antiquity of the Egyptian root 
 lies in the fact that the Egyptian doctrine of the ceaseless 
 flow through heaven of the celestial Nile accounts for the 
 application to the firmament of a word primarily signifying 
 water. 
 
 This chain of lingual roots established, a question suggests 
 itself: Is it possible that the region in which, through the 
 yearly bounty of the Nile, agriculture was free from the curse 
 which besets it elsewhere, was the land that occasioned the 
 legend of the garden of Eden ? Upon this hypothesis, the 
 Adam and Eve who were turned out of Paradise represent 
 emigrants from a country too small to maintain its over- 
 grown family. The memory of a paradise which they had 
 lost, was preserved in Aryana like the dream of a golden age.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 57 
 
 Did this legend, to which reference is made hereafter, take its 
 rise among a set of primeval colonists Egyptian exiles pining 
 for home, and handing down to the far-off generations of their 
 descendants an idealized reminiscence of their state of life by 
 the Nile, where man might eat of the fruit of the ground 
 without toil ? 
 
 The story of the Garden of Eden is what is learnedly 
 termed a Mythic Philosopheme ; that is, an allegory made up 
 of tradition and fancy. The garden itself is topographically 
 impracticable, unless we could imagine the Levant done 
 away with, and the rivers moved. 
 
 The present work, however, is prepared for the press in a 
 part of England which, though now consisting of dirty acres 
 of the ordinary kind, was the channel of a prehistoric river, 
 the bed of which discloses the remains of crocodiles, sharks, 
 and turtles, of the palaeotherium, the hyopotamus, and many 
 another extinct beast, and tells palaeontologists that it once 
 flowed by tangled jungle through simmering morasses toward 
 a sub-tropical sea. It is necessary, therefore, to allow some 
 latitude to the topographical descriptions of the garden of 
 delight, as it is impossible to guess the age of the traditions 
 upon which they may have been founded. 
 
 We may call to mind, to show the drift of the thoughts of 
 the ancient scribe, that, combined with the Phrat, or Euphrates, 
 and the Dekel, Digla, or Tigris, one of the rivers mentioned is 
 the Nile (Gihon *) which compasses Cush, or Ethiopia ; while 
 the word Pishon, the name of the fourth river of the legend, 
 and the one which has not been identified, is understood to 
 mean "overflowing." Perhaps it may be found to be the 
 Indus. 
 
 The word Paradise is familiarly applied to a garden 
 
 * Geon (Gen. ii. 13) was a designation of the Nile. "He maketh knowledge 
 to come forth like a stream, as Gihon in the days of vintage" (Sir. xxiv. 25). 
 The word " light " in the published text, in place of " stream," is due to an error 
 made by the grandson of Jesus in the translation from Hebrew into Greek, the 
 Hebrew equivalents of " light " and " stream " differing only one jot.
 
 58 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 watered from a contiguous river : " I came forth as a canal 
 dug from a river, as a water-pipe into a paradise " (Sir. 
 xxiv. 30). The Sohar speaks of an earthly and a heavenly 
 Paradise, of which the latter excels the former " as much 
 as darkness is excelled by light" 
 
 If the early Nomads from Egypt went westward and 
 southward, they might reach the Niger and the Congo, or be 
 lost to sight in equatorial Africa, where perhaps their children 
 are still, as lingual affinities suggest. If they went eastward, 
 they would have choice of two ways, land and water. If they 
 chose land, they would cross the line of the Suez canal, and 
 avoiding the Arabian desert, would enter what we now call 
 the Holy Land ; and the first natural bar to their continued 
 progress would be the river Euphrates. If they chose water, 
 they would have to coast to replenish their stores, as there is 
 reason to believe that' neither steamships existed, nor vessels 
 of sufficient tonnage to carry provision for a long voyage. 
 They would simply skirt the peninsula of Arabia and find 
 themselves in the Persian Gulf at the mouth of the Euphrates. 
 " The oldest traditions of the early Babylonians," says George 
 Smith in the "Chaldean Account of the Deluge," seem to 
 centre round the Persian Gulf. If the wanderers chose the 
 first bank of the river, they might meet their brothers of the 
 land route not far from the site of Babylon.* 
 
 If instead of sailing up the Persian Gulf, they held 
 resolutely to the east ; after an open sea journey of three 
 hundred miles, they would arrive in India. 
 
 The most important early records of man, so far as we 
 know them, are confined within the comparatively small area 
 which includes the borders of the countries just mentioned. 
 A bee line from the Nile to the Indus is about fifteen hundred 
 miles in length, just the distance which the Mormon pilgrims 
 
 * " The early inhabitants of South Babylonia were of a cognate race with the 
 primitive colonists both of Arabia and of the African Ethiopia" (Rawlinson, 
 "Herodotus," i. 442).
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 59 
 
 to the American west achieved in bullock waggons and hand 
 carts, across a country without roads or bridges. 
 
 If the track of our forefathers was as here suggested, some 
 memorial of the fact is to be expected to be found about 
 their squatting places. 
 
 In Egyptian hieroglyphics ur, uri, as we have seen, stand 
 for " water," " inundation ; " ar, aur, aru, represent " river." 
 A Greek term for water is ovpov. A Hebraized Egyptian 
 word, signifying " river," and describing chiefly, though not 
 exclusively, the river of Egypt, is yedr, iavr, iar (Gen. xli. I ; 
 Isa. xxxiii. 21, and xix. 6 ; Amos vii. 8, etc.). In Accadian 
 (pre- Assyrian cuneiform), ra is to " inundate." 
 
 From this archaic root comes the Egyptian name of the 
 Nile, Naru, Nairu, Naiari, probably denoting the streams at 
 the furcation of the Delta, na or nai in Egyptian grammar 
 being the definite article in the plural number. 
 
 A Hebrew equivalent for " river " is nahar, as in Nahar 
 Mitzraim, "the river of Egypt " (Gen. xv. 1 8). A ram-naharaim, 
 or " Syria of the rivers " (Judg. iii. 8, IO ; and version of LXX.), 
 is the Mesopotamia formed by the Tigris and Euphrates or by 
 the Abana and Pharphar rivers. An old Greek word signi- 
 fying " flowing " is vdpoe. 
 
 In the case of the Egyptian roots in the Hebrew language 
 the difficulty has to be met of distinguishing between primi- 
 tive roots and words learned during the centuries of Hebrew 
 servitude in Egypt. 
 
 The recorded migration of Abraham was from " Ur of 
 the Chaldees," a locality regarded as existing somewhere in 
 the region of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. But the word 
 "Ur" has been a crux for etymologists, and proclaimed 
 diversely to mean " fire," " a city," " a castle," and " a region." 
 
 Sir Henry Rawlinson discovered on the Chaldean cylinders 
 in the ruined temple at Mugheir (the site of which is so near 
 to the Euphrates as now and again to be flooded by it), a 
 reference to a " king of Ur," and to a temple of the moon at
 
 60 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Hur. Other inscriptions make it appear that this Ur was 
 originally a maritime city. What more natural than that it 
 should have been an archaic Egyptian colony, called by an 
 Egyptian water name ? Or what more probable than that in 
 the course of time, families like that of Abraham should 
 have branched off from the parent stock, having lost the 
 tradition of their Egyptian origin, though retaining marks of 
 their descent in the roots of their language ? 
 
 An element transferable from generation to generation, 
 and from race to race, which would appear to be as indestruc- 
 tible as etymological roots, and like them subject to change, 
 attrition, and even a kind of inversion, is proverbial wisdom, 
 even in its higher ranges of mystic thought. The results of 
 earnest speculations, wise deductions, rare inspirations, and 
 pure revelations, with the addition of ceremonial specialties, 
 doctrinal petrifactions, and prejudices and beliefs whose inner 
 meaning has perhaps been forgotten, somehow crystallize 
 together, and make up the religious tradition of a nation. 
 
 Our own system we draw from the Hebrews, whose 
 oriental idealism we have hardened by our occidental practi- 
 cality into a body of doctrine which its parents would fail to 
 recognize. 
 
 Similarly the Hebrews, apart from what was mystically 
 born among them (all great ideas, as we know them, are in 
 part a renewal of old ones, and in part a new birth of earth 
 and heaven acting upon ourselves), drew largely from Egypt 
 in their early days, from Assyria in a later day, and from 
 Babylonian and Medo-Persian influences later still. 
 
 The earliest head of the Hebrew tribe was the Chaldean 
 nomad, to whose birthplace on the Euphrates reference has 
 been made ; and the people themselves were directed (Deut. 
 xxvi. 5) to make acknowledgment of their origin thus : " An 
 Aramean . . . was my father ; and he went down into Egypt, 
 and sojourned there, few in number, and became there a 
 nation."
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 61 
 
 If we affiliate ourselves to the Hebrew traditions, we have 
 a son's right to examine into their lineage. 
 
 The links with Assyria, manifesting themselves in parallel 
 deluge legends, dovetailing records of events, and kindred 
 elements of language, we will not here recount, but turn to 
 the Babylonian influences of the second captivity, a time when 
 the Assyrian empire fell and a Medo-Persian sovereignty 
 was established. Then flourished in great power and repute 
 the Magi or priestly caste, who at that time were followers of 
 the Zoroastrian religion. The late Emanuel Deutsch, being 
 a Jew, expresses himself with some caution respecting these 
 foreign influences, but allows that they were of the highest 
 importance : " The analogies between the Persian creed of the 
 time and the Judaism of the captives is so striking that we 
 may fairly doubt which have most influenced the other ; we 
 only see clearly the extraordinary and radical change which, 
 within the space of a few generations, came over the exiles 
 under the influence of the civilization and religion of Persia." 
 
 We English have several reasons, then, for our interest in 
 the Aryan legacy : We have an Aryan strain in our blood, 
 derived from the westward migrants ; we rule a very 
 considerable group of the eastern settlers ; and our religious 
 traditions are derived from a so-called Semitic tribe claiming 
 to have its origin somewhere near that sweet ancient spot 
 between the rivers where the myth of Eden was attempted to 
 be localized. And before those traditions were delivered to 
 us they had received a new and great religious impulse from 
 the long sojourn of the people among purely Aryan surround- 
 ings, and under the influence of the religious and scientific 
 caste of the Medes and Persians. 
 
 We may yet have other interests in old Aryana, at least 
 in its western borders : it is strange, indeed, that English 
 enterprise and Hebrew patriotism together should not 
 ere now have leased a piece of Syria from its bankrupt 
 sovereign, and by making a track along the river valley
 
 62 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 to the Persian Gulf, have reopened the fabled garden of the 
 world. Now that the rich land has lain fallow so long, 
 is it not time to cleanse out its ancient choked canals, and 
 banish the desolation that broods over it ? a desolation that 
 is not so fatalistic but that it would flee before the busy hands 
 of energetic men.* 
 
 The language of the ancient Aryans, whose traditions are 
 now represented by the scanty remnant of the Bombay Parsis, 
 is the sister of the Sanscrit of the Vedas. The Mohammedan 
 extension of the seventh century drove out the depositaries 
 of the traditions from their ancient haunts, but the Mas- 
 dayasnian or Zoroastrian doctrines are not yet quite extinct, 
 even after their continuance for four thousand years. The 
 Parsis themselves are working like western students at the 
 gathering up of the fragments of their scriptures ; and, as 
 regards ourselves more particularly, we do not yet know how 
 much we are contributing to the preservation of these thoughts, 
 in the sacred literature we hold so dear, until we know how 
 much we owe to the sojourn of the Jews in Babylon, at the 
 time when that city fell under Medo-Persian rule. 
 
 At the time of Jesus, the priests of the Zoroastrian religion 
 appear to have been known to the peoples of the west 
 as Mages. 
 
 Lucian (Long., 4) refers to those called Mages as " a 
 soothsaying order among the Persians, Parthians, and Bactrians, 
 and especially the Medes." Cicero affirms (De Divin., i. 23) 
 that " No one can be king of the Persians, unless he have 
 
 * From a harbour facing Cyprus, along the line of a trade route to the 
 Euphrates, would require a railway of about a hundred and thirty English miles, 
 to be continued further alongside the river to the limit where it becomes 
 navigable by steam. Unless some active race colonizes the district, the river, 
 which a few years ago was a noble stream, two hundred yards wide as it flowed 
 by Babylon, will become obliterated in reedy morasses, and the towns upon its 
 banks be entirely mined. There are groves of palms, belts of date-trees, wheat, 
 barley, rice, coffee, fish in abundance ; colonization should be no more difficult 
 than in an unexplored country ; the Sultan would scarcely be likely to refuse a 
 concession ; a wilderness would become a garden once again ; and a new road be 
 afforded between Europe and India.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 63 
 
 previously gained perception of the training and science of 
 the Mages." Philo tells us (Quod omn. prob. lib., xi.) that 
 " Among the Persians is the order of Mages, who, investigating 
 the works of nature for the observation of truth, do quietly by 
 the clearest setting forth initiate themselves and others into 
 the divine virtues." Some old reactionist Jew, reviving the 
 hatred of foreign influences to which his nation was ever so 
 largely open, decided that " Whoever learns a single word 
 from a Mage is liable to death " (Schabb., f. 75 i. Bava- 
 Bathra). 
 
 The date when the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) 
 flourished, is considered by those who have the best right to 
 form a judgment to be about 2300 B.C., and the field of his 
 earliest influence to have been Bactria, the modern Bokhara, 
 north of Afghanistan. Here was a great trade centre for 
 merchants dealing with the woollen and the gold, and manifold 
 other products, of Central Asia. 
 
 Balkh (Bakhdi, Berekhdha, in the Zend Avesta) was the 
 capital city, and in the great fire temple there the seer is 
 believed to have preached to a large audience whom he ad- 
 dresses as " those that have come from near and from far." 
 
 He declares that the wise (the seven immortal benefactors 
 or arch-angelic beings, who personify divine qualities, and are 
 represented as emanations from deity) have manifested this 
 universe as a duality. There is a contrariety between the 
 life-giving and the destructive powers in this world, between 
 this life and the other life ; between the knowledge acquired 
 by study and experience, and the inborn celestial wisdom of 
 the pre-existent spirit. God is ruler through the good mind. 
 Immortality and wholesomeness are the attainment of the 
 soul of the pure. Punishment is not arbitrary for shameful 
 deeds, but the wicked man's own hatred for good impels him 
 away from good. Whatever we do, is stored in the dwelling 
 place of the heavenly singers, and meets us, when come 
 the increasers of the days, the holy ones who assist at the
 
 64 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 resurrection ; and when the weightiest life begins, which is 
 the destruction of the terrestrial creation. 
 
 Philosophy, astronomy, and law are ascribed to Zoroaster. 
 And the race which owned him as its teacher became a great 
 nation. 
 
 The mythical region from which this people is represented 
 as deriving its origin, is a semi-fabulous Eden, Airyana-vaejo 
 (Sanscrit, Erangvejadesha ; Pazand, Era-vezh). This is Iran 
 the pure, of the good creation. It is said of it that it was a 
 creation of delight, but unapproachable, else the whole cor- 
 poreal world would have gone after it. But a curious historical 
 reminiscence appears to mingle with the legend of Paradise. 
 After the contrariety of the earth life has manifested itself, 
 the region of bliss is found to have ten months of winter and 
 only two of summer. This would point to the north of the 
 route from Turkestan to China, or to the territory now 
 known as Siberia. The antithesis here is very singular, and 
 reminds us of that other garden legend, where the primitive 
 state is perfection, the after condition one of briars and thorns. 
 In the undisturbed city, men live long ; there is no weeping, 
 no falsehood, no avarice. In every forty years, from one 
 woman and one man, one child is born. Their law is good- 
 ness, and their religion the primeval religion, and when they 
 die they are righteous. Their ruler is a messenger angel from 
 God, Srosh the obedient, and their chieftain a homotaurus, 
 who lives on the seashore.* 
 
 From this very inconsistent region the Aryans emigrate 
 in bands. Sogdiana, Merve, Margiana, Bactra, Nisa, Herat, 
 Cabul, Candahar, Arachosia, Etymander, Khorasan, India 
 and Ragha in Media, the designations being according to 
 modern or classic names, are more or less fully identified as 
 the quarters of the Orient over which they squatted. 
 
 * Vide, Avesta, Vendidad, Fargard I. Mainyo-i-khard, XLIV. and LXII. 
 Another Avatar epoch, or rather, Zodiacal period, was marked by Cannes, or the 
 fish deity, who, the Assyrian student George Smith observes, is supposed to have 
 arisen from the Persian Gulf.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 65 
 
 Herodotus tells us that the Medes were anciently called 
 by all people Aryans. They were indeed Aryans, and pro- 
 bably the most important of the groups of emigrants, perhaps 
 the mother-tribe. They must have extended themselves even 
 to the south-west of what was Media proper, for in 2234 B.C. 
 Babylon, which so often in after days changed hands, became 
 the seat of a Median dynasty. It seems probable that 
 Armenia, too, was in part absorbed by these dominant 
 Aryans, for an inscription of Sargon at Khorsabad, describing 
 Assyrian victories (eighth century B.C.) refers to far-distant 
 Media, stretching onward to Albania. That is to say past 
 Ararat toward the north. 
 
 We have not at present any connected history of the 
 Zoroastrian Medes from their earliest period. History says 
 little more of them than does the Book of Genesis, which 
 (x. 2) refers to the Madai as of the descendants of Japheth. 
 But their literature makes us conscious of their presence. 
 It was spoken of by tradition some two centuries before our 
 era as having consisted of two millions of verses ; a develop- 
 ment which, it has been said by competent authorities, would 
 require the effluxion of a thousand years. 
 
 In the ninth century B.C. the Medes were an independent 
 and distinct people, whom the Assyrians (in a monument of 
 880 B.C.) claim to have defeated. Possibly in the earlier 
 references to them they were not differentiated from the 
 general Aryan stock. 
 
 In the eighth century B.C. Ecbatana, the Median capital, 
 was built. In the Book of Tobit is a reference both to this 
 city and also to the ancient city Ragha, the capital of the 
 earliest Aryan settlement in Media, according to the Zend 
 Avesta. In this century, too, a Median monarch conquered 
 Persia, and his granddaughter married a Persian noble, and 
 became the mother of Cyrus. 
 
 Afterwards we find the Medes and Persians regarded as 
 a sort of twin race. They had descended from the same 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 mother Arya, and each seems to have helped the other. 
 Media was the cradle of the Persian power, producing a 
 hardy race, breeding fine horses, and the men themselves not 
 to be bought by gold. Under Cyrus the fortunes of Persia 
 obscured the name of the Mede ; but the latter was the more 
 advanced in the arts, and the influence of the Magian tribe 
 was prominent in the Persian system. The book of the 
 chronicles kept by the learned caste was ever before the 
 monarch for his instruction. 
 
 The Medo-Persian empire extended itself over all the 
 Asiatic regions that lie between the Mediterranean and the 
 Indus. Luxury followed upon the increase of wealth and 
 centralization ; and the stern Macedonian at length overran 
 the whole empire, and brought in a new dynasty and a new 
 regime. In the burning of the palace at Persepolis, through 
 a foolish weakness of Alexander, the royal copy of the 
 Zoroastrian scriptures was destroyed, and by far the greater 
 part of them is not now extant. Perhaps, as the scriptures 
 of other nations have been so unexpectedly recovered, there 
 may yet be found among ruins at Pasargada, Ecbatana, 
 Ragha, Susa, or Persepolis, some records of Aryan thought, 
 as it was both before and at the date of the cuneiform inscrip- 
 tions of Darius. The language in which what we have of 
 the Aryan scriptures is written, is older than that variety 
 of cuneiform. The more modern Parsi books, such as were 
 gathered, translated, or composed in the early centuries of 
 our era under the Sasanian dynasty of Persia, are still faith- 
 fully Zoroastrian, and serve to explain the allusions in the 
 older books. There is, therefore, something substantial to 
 turn to when we seek to examine the influences that so 
 strongly affected our religious ancestors, the Hebrews, when 
 they came under the Medo-Persian rule during the period of 
 their stay in Babylonia, consequent upon the various depor- 
 tations of Nebo-kudurri-ussur in the sixth century B.C. Some 
 never returned from this and the earlier transportations, having
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 67 
 
 become naturalized in the strange land which they had been 
 carried off to populate, and having obtained, some of them, 
 political employment, others a comfortable position with 
 foreign servants under them, others again a profitable opening 
 for traffic. Even the literary classes did not all return to 
 Judea at the time of the patriotic revival, when Jerusalem was 
 allowed to be re-established. Nahardea, in Babylonia, re- 
 mained a centre of Jewish colleges from the time of the exile 
 for several centuries, and was the seat of learning which pro- 
 duced Hillel the Great, who left Babylon to take the Presidency 
 at Jerusalem. 
 
 That beautiful patriotism which took the exiles home, not- 
 withstanding the cosmopolitan influences that had been acting 
 upon them through their intercourse with other peoples, 
 eventually gave rise to a very narrow and bigoted Judaism. 
 That this Judaism was at no time more isolated or self- 
 contained than the religious system of other peoples, save 
 and except by reason of a proud churlishness which for a 
 time marked a dominant faction at Jerusalem, may be seen 
 from the foreign elements that are to be found in the Apoca- 
 lyptic and Apocryphal books, the Talmud, and the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The Talmud affirms that the very names of the angels the 
 Jews learned in Babylon. They had, indeed, learned what 
 became the Kabbalistic theory of existence ; and, with a 
 beautiful angelistic faith, had borrowed also a too large reliance 
 upon the petty powers of demonology. 
 
 It has been said that, while the Hindus and the Greeks 
 regarded as animated the whole of nature, the Persians im- 
 paradised the creation as being the abode of angels. How 
 spiritual their conceptions were may be judged from relics 
 still existing, which probably represent much older strata 
 of thought than the date of the books implies : 
 
 "To the Celestials the bounty of the Most High hath 
 vouchsafed a body which admitteth not of separation which
 
 68 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 doth not wax old, and is susceptible neither of pain nor 
 defilement." 
 
 "Mezdam separated man from the other animals by 
 the distinction of a soul, which is a free and independent 
 substance, without a body or anything material, indivisible 
 and without position, by which he attaineth to the glory of 
 the angels. 
 
 " By his knowledge he united the Soul with the elemental 
 body. 
 
 " If one doth good in the elemental body, and possesseth 
 useful knowledge, and acts aright, and is a Hirtasp [one who 
 refrains from much eating and sleep for the love of God], and 
 doth not give pain to harmless animals ; 
 
 "When he putteth off the inferior body, I will introduce 
 him into the abode of Angels, that he may see me with the 
 nearest angels " (Uesatir, or Sacred Writings of the Ancient 
 Persian Prophets. Bombay, 1818). 
 
 Among the answers to the question, " How is it possible 
 to seek the preservation and prosperity of the body without 
 injury of the soul, and the deliverance of the soul without 
 injury of the body ? " are the following : 
 
 " Suffer not anxiety ; since he that is anxious is heedless 
 of the enjoyment of the world and of the spirit, and decay 
 happens to his body and soul." 
 
 "With a malicious man carry on no conflict." 
 
 " In always doing of good works, be diligent ; that it may 
 come to thy assistance in the heavens." 
 
 " Be not reliant on much treasure and wealth ; since in the 
 end, it is necessary for thee to leave all " (Mainyo-i-khard, 
 ii. 20, 54, 96, 97). 
 
 There is little doubt which of the extracts that follow 
 Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hebrew, Christian is the latest version 
 of a fine metaphoric conception : 
 
 " One can escape from hell if one uses heavenly wisdom 
 as a covering for the back, heavenly contentment as armour,
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 69 
 
 heavenly truth for a shield, heavenly gratitude for a club, 
 heavenly devotedness for a bow, heavenly [or the spirit of] 
 liberality, for an arrow ... in this manner it is possible to 
 come to heaven and the sight of God " (Mainyo-i-khard, 
 p. 315 ff. Paris MS. and ed. E. W. West, xliii. 5). 
 
 " And converting Sila (Virtue) into a cloak, and Jhanam 
 (Thought) into a breast-plate, he [Sakyamuni] covered man- 
 kind with the armour of Dhammo (Law) and provided them 
 with the most perfect panoply " (quoted by Tumour, in " Jour, 
 of the As. Soc. of Bengal," 1838, p. 796). 
 
 " And he put on righteousness as a breast-plate [or, coat 
 of mail], and salvation for a helmet upon his head ; and he 
 put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with 
 zeal as a cloak" (Isaiah lix. 17). 
 
 " Wherefore take up the whole armour of God . . . having 
 girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breast- 
 plate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the 
 preparation of the gospel of peace ; withal taking up the 
 shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery 
 darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and 
 the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God " (Ephes. 
 vi. 13). 
 
 The origin of man is always likely to be a matter of 
 interest ; we will accordingly gather together from the various 
 corners where it lies in fragments the legend of the Aryan 
 protoplast, and endeavour to rehabilitate our mythical ancestor 
 in order to compare him with his Hebrew congener. 
 
 First must be exhumed an ancient theory which we will 
 venture to designate that of double evolution. One process is 
 confined to the physical world, regarded as the nidus of life. 
 In the Aryan mythology, a bull is the first and sole inhabitant 
 of the earth, to which succeeds man. In the Indian books the 
 succession of animals is much more complete. The incarna- 
 tions of Vishnu, some of which are not without their parallel 
 in Assyrian legend, are successively as a fish (cf. Dagon,
 
 70 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Cannes, Jonah), a turtle, a boar, a lion, a pigmy, a rude man 
 armed with an axe, a hunter or warrior with a bow, an agricul- 
 turist furnished with a plough, a priest or religious teacher. 
 The final incarnation seems to imply a mysterious subversal 
 of the whole order, a completion of the cycle, a saviour herald- 
 ing destruction. Another similar scheme of succession consists 
 of plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, wild 
 animals, man. These successive embodiments may fairly be 
 taken to represent the evolution of physical life. 
 
 The simultaneous process which eventually results in man, 
 is that of a spiritual being gradually descending, by a sort of 
 fall as it were, into a region of grosser life. The Parsi Bun- 
 daheshn, or Book of Genesis, which is a compilation of old 
 fragmentary lore, refers to a statement in the Law, or ancient 
 scripture, concerning beings who fed first on water, then on 
 the fruit of trees, then on milk, finally on meat. Eating, it 
 will be remembered, had something to do with the Adamite 
 fall ; but here it would really appear that a gradual materiali- 
 zation is adumbrated, the spiritual entity becoming more cor- 
 poreal, stage by stage, until eventually he can make organic 
 the chemical atoms of the terrestrial sphere, and is fitted to 
 adopt the embryo animal body, which, by its own process of 
 evolution, is being prepared for him. The reverse process 
 with regard to food heralds the millennium, to which we will 
 refer more fully in its place. 
 
 The cosmogony to which these developments belong is 
 cyclic. A period passes in tranquillity without evil, then 
 ensues a period of evils and wars ; then, as good and evil 
 mingle, appears the level of life as we know it. 
 
 In the works of Mirkond, the Persian historian, we find it 
 stated that a being bearing the name of Kaiomart is asserted 
 by the Magi to be identical with the Hebrew Adam. 
 The following passages from the Avesta will serve as intro- 
 duction to the myth of our Aryan ancestor, who, like as the 
 Kabbalists regarded the first or archetypal Adam, is not so
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 71 
 
 much the actual protoplast as the medium of production of 
 the human race : 
 
 " The Fravashi (angelic counterpart) of the pure Gayo-mara- 
 than praise we, who first heard the mind of Ahura-Mazda, and 
 his commands, from which he created the race of the Aryan 
 regions " (Khordah-Avesta, Farvardin Yasht, 24, 87). 
 
 " This word have I (Ahura-Mazda) spoken . . . before the 
 creation of this heaven, before the water, before the earth, 
 before the trees, before the creation of the four-footed bull, 
 before the birth of tJte pure man, the two-legged, before the 
 body of this sun was created according to the wish of the 
 Amesha-cpentas [the seven personified divine attributes whose 
 duty is the preservation of the universe] " (Avesta, Yagna, xix. 
 1 6). The "pure man " here is Kaidmart or Gayo-marathan. 
 
 " All the good, mighty, holy Fravashis of the pure, praise 
 we, from Gayo-marathan unto (^aoshyang the victorious " 
 (Yagna, xxvi. 32). We will refer later to this Caoshyarig or 
 Sosiosh. 
 
 " Praise to the Fravashi of the Bull, of Gayo(marathan), 
 of the holy Zarathustra, the pure " ( Yagna, Ixvii. 63). 
 
 " Praise be to Ahura-Mazda. Praise to the Amesha- 
 gpentas, praise to Mithra who possesses wide pastures, praise 
 to the Sun with swift steeds, praise to the Eyes of Ahura- 
 Mazda, praise to the Bull, praise to Gaya(marathan), praise to 
 the Fravashi of Zarathustra, the holy, pure. Praise to the 
 whole world of the pure, which was, and is, and is to be " 
 (Khordah-Avesta, Qarset Nyayis, i.). 
 
 " May all Fravashis of the pure . . . from Gayomart to 
 osios, here be mentioned" (Prayer after the Afergans 
 [written in Parsi, more modern than Zend]). 
 
 " Blessed be the souls of the lords, Desturs, Mobeds, 
 Herbeds, believers, propagators of the faith, the disciples who 
 have died on this corporeal earth. Blessed be the soul of 
 Gayomars, and Hoshang, and Tahmur and Jamshe'd, etc." 
 (Aferin of the seven Amshaspands [Parsi]).
 
 72 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " May the heavenly yazatas [angels], the earthly yazatas, 
 the heavenly Time, the Frohars [the same as Fravashis, pre- 
 existent spiritual counterparts, or the medium or power which 
 holds body and soul together] of the pure, from Gayomart to 
 Cosios, the victorious, the very majestic, the being, having 
 been, about to be, the born, unborn, belonging to the region, 
 belonging to other regions, the pious men and women, not of 
 age and of age, who have deceased upon this earth in the faith 
 all Frohars and souls of the same be here mentioned " 
 (Aferin Gahanbar, 4 [Parsi]). 
 
 " The Heavenly Understanding, created by Mazda, praise 
 we " (Khordah-Avesta, Sirozah, ii. 2). 
 
 "The first after the Understanding among the pure 
 creatures praise we " (A vesta, Vispered, xxii. 5). This 
 description, according to tradition, denotes Kaidmart. 
 
 "We begin praise and adoration of the bull, of Gaya- 
 (meretan), of Manthra-gpenta [the holy word personified], the 
 pure, efficacious " (Vispered, xxiv. 3). 
 
 These very catholic prayers and praises, which are no 
 doubt of very different dates, show the primeval man, regarded 
 as a mythological being, and having, indeed, come to be 
 treated with adoration. 
 
 It is to later works than the Avesta that we have to turn 
 to find any elucidation of the myth ; the earlier writings 
 concur in showing the existence of the legend which the later 
 ones explain. 
 
 In the Desatir a collection of writings of the ancient 
 Persian poets we find Kaiomart addressed as " the prince of 
 the higher sphere." The Persian commentator names him 
 " Ferzinsar, the son of Yasanajanan " (which we take to mean 
 head or beginning of the Farsi, or Persians, son of the Spirit 
 of Life), " whom they call Gil-shah [lord of clay] and 
 Giomert ; " and describes him as " sent by the benevolent and 
 merciful Ruler of the world on the work of prophecy." He 
 also describes him as having reclaimed man, and as held to be
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 73 
 
 the Father of Mankind. The address to Kaiomart to which 
 the commentator is referring is most passionate and poetic. 
 It runs as follows : 
 
 " He who created thee, and is the Creator of all, is mighty ! 
 
 " And gave thee refulgence, and enlightened All ! 
 
 " And sent forth upon thee a portion of his awful light ! 
 
 " And next, according to his will, assigned thee a course 
 which is everlasting ! 
 
 " And placed thee high in the lofty eminence of the seventh 
 Heaven ! 
 
 " I pray of thee, O Father, Lord ! that thou ask, by the 
 splendour of thy soul, from thy father and Lord, thy Prime 
 Cause and Lover, the Intelligence that glorified thee with 
 light, and all the free and blazing lights that possess intelli- 
 gence, that they would ask of their Father and Lord, the 
 Intelligence of all intelligences, the first created Intelligence, 
 the most approved wish that can be asked of the Being, most 
 worthy of all Beings to be adored, the one worthy of the 
 worship of mankind, the Stablisher of All, to make me one of 
 those who approach the band of his Lights and the secrets 
 of his essence ; and to pour light on the band of Light and 
 Splendour ; and to magnify them, and to purify them and 
 us ; while the world endureth, and to all eternity, so let it be ! 
 
 " In the name of the Lofty, the Giver, the Just, the Lord ! 
 O Ferzinsar ! thou art the Prophet whom three sons obey. 
 
 [Persian note. The mineral, vegetable, and animal king- 
 doms.] 
 
 "And the four mothers are under thy sway." [Persian 
 note. rThe four elements.] 
 
 Some writers have attempted to make Kaidmart a his- 
 torical personage, as the first sovereign of the earliest dynasty 
 of Persia, the Peshdadian. The annals of that dynasty Sir 
 W. Jones describes as dark and fabulous, that of the Kaiani 
 kings who succeeded them heroic and poetical, that of the 
 Sasanian sovereigns historical. The Peshdadian may well be
 
 74 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 dark and mythical, seeing that the word signifies "before 
 created." According to the legend, however, the son of 
 Kaiomart was a king who discovered fire from flint, while his 
 grandson's nephew was Jemsheed, the founder of Persepolis, 
 who is said to have lived for centuries, and to have divided his 
 subjects into castes. 
 
 On the supposed historical ground Kaiomart has a rival. 
 Malcolm, in his " History of Persia," says : " In almost all 
 modern accounts of Persia which have been translated from 
 Mahommedan authors, Kaiomurs is considered the first king of 
 the country ; but the Dabistan, a book professedly compiled 
 from works of the ancient Guebers or worshippers of fire, 
 presents us with a chapter on a succession of monarchs and 
 prophets who preceded Kaiomurs. According to the author, 
 the Persians, previous to the reign of Kaiomurs, and conse- 
 quently long before the mission of Zoroaster, venerated a 
 prophet called Mah-abad (or the great Abad), whom they 
 considered as the father of men. We are told in the Dabistan 
 that the ancient Persians deemed it impossible to ascertain 
 who were the first parents of the human race. The knowledge 
 of man, they alleged, was quite incompetent to such a dis- 
 covery ; but they believed, on the authority of their books, 
 that Mah-abad was the person left at the end of the last great 
 cycle, and consequently father of the present world." This 
 cyclic theory is cognate with that of the " rounds," learned in 
 India by the modern theosophical Buddhists. 
 
 The ancient Persians "believe time to be divided into a 
 succession of cycles or periods, to each of which they allot its 
 own people, believing that a male and female are left at the 
 end of every cycle to be the parents of the population of the 
 next. 
 
 " The only particulars they relate of Mah-abad are, that he 
 and his wife, having survived the former cycle, were blessed 
 with a numerous progeny, who inhabited caves and clefts of 
 rocks, and were uninformed of both the comforts and luxuries
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 75 
 
 of life ; that they were at first strangers to order and govern- 
 ment, but that Mah-abad, inspired and aided by Divine 
 power, resolved to alter their condition, and to effect that 
 object, planted gardens and invented ornaments and forged 
 weapons, etc." 
 
 The Avesta, however, makes no reference to Mah-abad, 
 who must be considered a strictly Persian creation, the 
 Dabistan making Kaiomart only the first king of the fifth 
 dynasty of the monarchs of Persia, and the sovereign to 
 whom is transmitted a celestial volume in perfect accord with 
 the Mahabadian code. 
 
 Later Persian writers follow the chronology of the Jews, 
 and trace the descent of Kaiomart from Noah. He reclaimed, 
 says Ferdosi, his subjects from a state of savage barbarity, 
 but his civilizing efforts brought him many wars with the 
 deevs or magicians. The just king's army, however, was 
 joined by all the lions, tigers, and panthers in his dominions, 
 who left their native forests to aid him, and routed the deevs. 
 There is another and slightly discrepant account of this super- 
 natural aid to which we need not advert more particularly. 
 After the victory Kaiomart is represented as retiring to his 
 capital of Balkh. 
 
 This is but imaginary history. We will return to the 
 myth, which has at least a philosophic conception for its basis. 
 We gather it mainly from the Bundehesch and the Majmil al 
 Tawarikh. 
 
 According to one account, the present cycle, taken out of 
 the Endless Time, is to be twelve thousand years ; for one 
 half of this, the primeval man and the bull (the animal 
 creation, we may presume) lived " without evil in the superior 
 regions of the world." During this time six signs of the 
 Zodiac were traversed. As the world came under the sign of 
 the Balance, dissensions manifested themselves. 
 
 According to another account, the first model of existence 
 incarnated upon earth is the Homotaurus, who, however,
 
 76 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 eventually succumbs to the attacks of the Principle of Evil. 
 As he dies Kaiomart proceeds from him. Kai6mart is andro- 
 gynous, as also is Adam in one of the two versions we have 
 of the creation myth, and in the traditions handed down by 
 the Kabbalistic Rabbins. R. Samuel Bar Nahman, who pre- 
 sided over twelve hundred students at Pumbadita* in the early 
 part of the fourth century of our era, describes Adam and Eve 
 as created conjoined, and is as absurdly specific as Plato's 
 friends in the Symposium in describing the manner of such 
 conjunction. 
 
 As opposed to the bull, who is typified by emblems of 
 death and deprivation of speech, Kaiomart is a living and 
 speaking being. He was formed radiant, white, with eyes 
 looking up to heaven. He is essentially an immortal being, 
 and a particular genius watches over his safety to enable him 
 to withstand the power of the Principle of Evil. 
 
 The accounts we have of the myth, being of late compila- 
 tion, differ among themselves, and wander into trivialities ; 
 but there seems evidence that Kaiomart represented man in a 
 higher state than ordinary mortality. The same belief was 
 held by the Rabbins concerning the primeval Adam. " Gar- 
 ments of light, these were the garments of the first Adam," 
 was the commentary made by Rabbi Meir on the coats of 
 skin, or fleshly bodies, while Adam's deep sleep was said to 
 represent the lapse from the state of essential life. 
 
 Notwithstanding his immortality, Kaiomart did not survive 
 the combined attack of the Principle of Evil, the Father of 
 Death, and of thousands of deevs who fell upon him. But the 
 elementary principles of his being were purified by sunlight, 
 and confided to the genii of fire and of earth. After a number 
 of years there grew from this seed a tree of life, spreading 
 into two branches. 
 
 A poet in the Veda seems to be considering some such 
 evolution as this when he asks, " Who has seen the firstborn, 
 
 * Mouth of the Bedaitha, a canal once joining the Euphrates and Tigris.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 77 
 
 when he who had no bones bore him that had bones ? " This 
 is the very crux of the spiritual evolution theory. 
 
 The next stage brings us to the creation of strictly terres- 
 trial man. In the Avesta itself Kaiomart is at once supernal 
 and the physical protoplast ; but in the later writings are 
 frequent references to first parents of a kind not very differ- 
 ent from the fabled Adam and Eve ; while to Kaiomart, on 
 the other hand, the Kabbalistic conception of the first and 
 spiritual Adam manifests a similar resemblance. 
 
 The tree of two branches develops into two human beings, 
 a male and a female, Meschia and Meschiana (maskya is Old 
 Bactrian for man), who are pure, and obedient to Ahura- 
 Mazda. Heaven is destined for them, provided they be 
 humble of heart, perform the work of the law, be pure in 
 thought, word, and deed, and do not invoke the deevs. By 
 so continuing they will be a reciprocal blessing to each other. 
 First they speak thus : It is Ahura-Mazda who has given 
 the water, the earth, trees, animals, the stars, the moon, and 
 sun, and all the benefits that spring therefrom. Then the 
 spirit of opposition enters their thoughts, and all becomes 
 inverted. They turn to the evil principle, and confess him 
 author of their benefits. They eat and clothe themselves. 
 Their food is of more substantial kind, step by step, until they 
 reach flesh. Then they make a fire, obtain metals, and prac- 
 tice handicrafts, all without thanking God. They quarrel and 
 lose the wish to be re-united. Finally comes the serpent, not 
 in the well-known guise of the Hebrew story, but in that 
 of which Dr. Donaldson thought he saw traces in the Eden 
 legend, that of the phallic symbol. Excess begins, with arro- 
 gance and selfishness on the part of each and injury to both. 
 In the Avesta itself there is no trace of Meschia and 
 Meschiana, and it is therefore probable that they do not 
 belong to the original Zoroastrian conception of creation, but 
 have been evolved by an amplification of the myth. But if 
 the legend of them is borrowed from that of Adam and Eve,
 
 78 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 it is singular that an element which some scholars have 
 regarded as almost eliminated from the Hebrew account 
 
 o 
 
 should appear distinctly in the Parsi version. If the latter, 
 which is frequent in the books of later date than the Avesta, 
 be borrowed from the Hebrew story, it must surely be from an 
 earlier version of it than that which we now possess. 
 
 The myth of Kaiomart has the best evidence of being a 
 veritable original ; and, moreover, is in harmony with the 
 cyclic beliefs of the Zoroastrians. The attempt to set down 
 Kaiomart as the earliest of the kings of Persia, must be due 
 to an endeavour after history-making. The further account 
 of the historians, that it was owing to the increasing depravity 
 of the race, by which it was rendered nearly extinct, that the 
 all-merciful Creator called Kaiomart to the throne in order 
 to save mankind, may also be regarded as an amplification of 
 the legend. This reading, however, may not be wholly incon- 
 sistent with the cyclic idea, for the wearing out of one cycle 
 by reason of depravity and declension, must surely be the 
 beginning of the regenerative era, unless we are to believe, 
 with the author of the Second Book of Esdras, who is evi- 
 dently under Babylonian influences, that the world reverts to 
 an archaic state of silence and lifelessness between period and 
 period of life. 
 
 Was one and the last of such periods beginning or ending, 
 the present writer wonders, when the spot in which he is 
 revising these pages was the bed of a huge estuary, from 
 which may now be gathered the remains of crocodiles and 
 sharks, and of many a shell-fish that dwelt in the brine long 
 before the fabled Adam and Eve were even thought of. 
 
 To each of these seonic periods a divine messenger is 
 ascribed, and each messenger seems in a sense to be 
 regarded as identical with the others, just as John the 
 Baptist was regarded as a re-appearance of Elijah. The 
 key to this is that each supernal man is regarded as but 
 the missionary manifestation of the One Supreme Being ;
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 79 
 
 and the idea, if pantheistic in excess, is not altogether an 
 unworthy one. 
 
 We have alluded to the Principle of Evil in the Zoro- 
 astrian creed. There it appears personified as Aharman 
 (Anro-mainyus), but his existence is only permitted for a 
 limited period by Ahura-Mazda (Hormezd), the Creator of all 
 good. The sway of the Evil One extends only over the 
 mortal life. In one of the oldest Gathas, or original hymns 
 of the Avesta, some of which are considered to date from the 
 time of the Prophet, we find, " Let not the mischief-maker 
 destroy the second life ; " meaning, according to the Parsi 
 commentators, that in the second period his power to destroy 
 ceases. This faith is more fully developed in expression in 
 the Desatir, where we find : " Amongst the most resplendent, 
 powerful, and glorious of the servants who are free from 
 inferior bodies and matter, there is none God's enemy or 
 rival, or disobedient, or cast down, or annihilated." 
 
 It is necessary to understand something of this before 
 turning to the completion of the myth of Kai6mart. And it 
 may be well to convey more distinctly the basis of the Parsi 
 doctrines. They are founded, not unlike those of the Egyp- 
 tians, the Brahmans, the Pythagoreans, and the Kabbalists, on 
 the ancient conception of Paro-asti, or pre-existence. " The 
 paro-asti is not the life in the other world, as we understand 
 it, but it signifies the primary state of the soul, to which it 
 returns after its separation from the body ; this state is then 
 identified with that of everlasting life.* 
 
 In the Dabistan the same belief is found, without which, 
 it may be named, it is impossible to understand the Kabbala, 
 Buddhism, the doctrines of Pythagoras, and certain sayings 
 of the Apocryphal writers and of the Pharisees of the time 
 when our era begins. The noblest modern expression of the 
 doctrine may be found in Wordsworth's " Intimations of 
 Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood." 
 * Haug. " Hadokht Nask." Notes.
 
 8o THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 The Persian faith is that souls are eternal and limitless, 
 that they proceed from above, and are spirits of the upper 
 sphere. Those who are imperfectly developed migrate from 
 one body to another, until by the efficacy of good thoughts, 
 good words, and good actions, they are fully and finally 
 emancipated from the corporeal condition, and gain their 
 higher rank. They are also, according to the quality of their 
 good works, more or less in affinity with a particular star, and 
 belong to the sphere assigned to that star. 
 
 The regaining of this primitive state with all the added 
 gains of mortal experience, may well be deemed at least as 
 difficult a process as that of birth as we know it. The resur- 
 rection is regarded as the great deed ; in a very old part of 
 Avesta it is designated " the greatest business." As the 
 crowing of the cock awakes us and convinces us that what 
 we saw in sleep was but a dream, so in like manner after 
 death we shall realize that the corporeal world itself was but 
 a dream that is passed away. The cock is with the Parsis 
 the resurrection symbol. 
 
 In this difficult business of revival, man is not without a 
 helper. There is Sosiosh (Saoshyas, Caoshyang) the kindler, 
 the victorious, the uplifted amid the corporeal. " He is so 
 helpful that he will save the whole corporeal world ; he is so 
 high amongst the corporeal, that he, endowed with body and 
 vital powers, will withstand the destroyer of the corporeal." 
 He has a double attribute, probably owing to modifications of 
 doctrine by lapse of time. He is a prophet appearing before 
 the close of a millennium to rearrange the world, and prepare 
 for the resurrection. He is the victorious dead-restorer, who 
 raises the dead or causes the resurrection by means of the 
 power and assistance of wisdom.* In the former sense he is 
 a successor to Kaiomart ; in the later he would seem to be 
 almost identical with him in function. 
 
 As the millennium draws near, the force of nature weakens. 
 
 * " Mainyo-i-khard."
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 81 
 
 Men will pass three days and nights in adoration of the 
 Supreme. As they began to corporealize themselves by 
 feeding first upon water, and in succession upon fruit, milk, 
 and flesh, so now they will reverse the process. They will 
 cease to take flesh, then milk, then fruit, and finally will drink 
 water only. Then will appear the Helper, and man will feed 
 no more, and yet he will not die. 
 
 Our Aryan progenitor would appear to be rather a spec- 
 tral being, but if we follow the creed of our Zoroastrian 
 cousins, that on awakening from the sleep of heedlessness, we 
 shall recognize that the earth life has been but an instructive 
 dream, we ourselves, being yet within that dream, must now 
 appear to be but shadows before that reverend ancestor who 
 so long ago rubbed away the heavy mist from his eyes, and 
 set us an example of the high destiny of man. 
 
 At first sight it would seem that to dwell upon the final 
 or resurrection condition of the Zoroastrian Adam would be 
 to turn away from the consideration of his genesis, and to be 
 regarding the creation legend of the Parsis through lenses 
 that invert. 
 
 But if we follow the Aryan belief that earth life, when 
 spiritually regarded, is related to eternal life as but an episode 
 devoted to corporeal sleep or dream, then either side of that 
 shadowy period must equally be the fringe of the true state 
 from which all our temporary existence draws its essential 
 vitality. Under such an aspect, birth and death alike are 
 rifts in the veil which covers us ; and the difference between 
 them is only in the direction of the soul's passage whether 
 into or out from the umbrageous avenue of mortality. 
 
 Notwithstanding our very natural and wholesome prejudices 
 in favour of the existence in which we are called to manifest 
 ourselves, and which forms for us the all-important present, 
 the now hidden life may be the sphere from which proceeds 
 that magic quality which bids chemical atoms uprise in 
 organic force and beauty. If, as contradistinguished from 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the seventy years' journey in the caravan whose protection we 
 have found temporarily serviceable, the unrealized dream 
 state be the abiding and virtual life ; then the ideal or 
 standard man of any complete philosophy of creation, whether 
 entering upon his perigee or apogee, must represent the 
 strength and character of that more truly substantial life, in 
 archetypal mintage undefaced, or as near thereto as may be 
 attained, and he must be pre-eminent in earthly uses as well. 
 
 Kaidmart, or the pure man, as manifested in the Aryan 
 books, is represented as the summit of the animal creation, 
 differentiated from the lower degrees by his upright carriage, 
 his articulate speech, his response to the mind of the Heavenly 
 Supreme. He retains his hold upon essential life, perhaps in 
 the continued consciousness of relation to his angelic counter- 
 part His pre-eminence of type is declared by his being 
 described as the white man par excellence. This attribute of 
 the arch-natural man was, perhaps, a mark of high distinction 
 in the days when the myth of creation was embodied. The 
 tribes among whom the Aryans made their way were probably 
 for the most part dark and degraded aborigines of a lower 
 race than themselves. 
 
 As the name of the Hebrew Haadamah implies a reddish 
 colour, the essential difference of the Aryan prototype is that 
 he is white. We esteem this whiteness a privilege still ; 
 maybe, when that legend was young, the tradition survived 
 of the day when the vanguard of humanity somehow emerged 
 from negrohood, and changed curly wool into hair. What, 
 it may be curiously asked, are we doing to advance our race, 
 in equal measure with the fathers and mothers of those days ? 
 With our Christianity, our commerce, and our " koom-posh," 
 do we yet even dream what our next step is to be to take 
 us individually as much above ourselves as we seem superior 
 to Soudanese and Bushmen, and they to gorillas ? 
 
 But Kaiomart, or the ideal man, was not only white and 
 radiant; he is represented as by origin an immortal being,
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 83 
 
 with eyes looking up to heaven. The liquid of life had been 
 applied to him in creation which rendered him ever beautiful 
 and radiant, as a spiritual being who could dominate this 
 body of mortality. The prophet Zoroaster is represented in 
 the paintings and sculptures as endowed with a nimbus, a 
 glory or crown of radiance, which is meant to typify the 
 shining forth of the atmosphere that fills the world of light. 
 
 We may assume that Kaiomart was understood never to 
 have lost the consciousness of the unity of the two worlds. 
 That oneness, Persian writers have said, even distinguished 
 ascetics may comprehend. To understand the theory of 
 resurrection, as it chimes in with such views as these, and to 
 make an intelligent analysis of the word itself (anastasis) as 
 we find it in the philosophical language of Greece, it will be 
 necessary to bear in mind a matter that is considered in 
 Persian books as belonging to ancient lore ; a doctrine, more- 
 over, that is revived by new believers in every age. This is 
 the belief, as summarized by the authors of the Synopsis of 
 the Dabistan, " that a man may attain the faculty to quit and 
 reassume his body, or to consider it as a loose garment, which 
 he may put off at pleasure, for ascending to the world of light, 
 and on his return be reunited with the material elements." 
 
 It is logically manifest that these mystic passages of the 
 soul must in a partial way be in themselves a resurrection 
 and a new birth. If birth and death are entrances and exits 
 in due form and ceremony with all one's belongings through 
 the great portals of our mortal career, in which we are come 
 to stay ; these other movements are like unencumbered and 
 hasty errands, to execute which one steps out unnoticed 
 through a private door, which is either left open or the master 
 carries the key. 
 
 There is no double evolution necessary for this, for the 
 physical frame is quiescent, held only by life's cord of ductile 
 gold ; but .the processes by which the spirit adapts itself to 
 the degrees of the spheres or transcends from denser to rarer
 
 84 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 atmospheres, are told of only in the mazy utterances of seers 
 themselves. 
 
 This kind of occultism is very mischief of moonshine unto 
 the modern mind, well swaddled as it is by that most useful 
 mother, mechanical and commercial realism. But whatever 
 may be the right and wholesome way of practical life, 
 philosophically we have no right to ignore the bridges by 
 men in every age held to exist between the present "solid 
 unreality " and the regions where are 
 
 " Trodden upon by noiseless angels, 
 Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight." 
 
 Such questions must rest upon their merits. Though 
 speaking philosophically, an earth life may be but episodical ; 
 yet it is, at least apparently, a considerable episode, and the 
 real business during its progress. To fill out one's existence 
 from a plane, however superior, to which one is not adjusted 
 at the time, instead of expanding into the best capacities of 
 the life that is present, would indeed be to turn what may be 
 truest sunshine on its own plane into merest moonshine on 
 another. The materialistic mind in its own purblind fashion 
 is no doubt conscious of this truth, but forgets the fact that 
 morbid cravings after the life withdrawn, while they may be 
 an infringement of a true and wholesome balance, are no 
 more so than is the equally morbid resort to a hoodwink of 
 false science and a puerile arrogance of certainty, assumed in 
 order that all beyond a defined horizon shall be ignored. 
 
 If, by reason of our having journeyed " further from the 
 east " to learn the mighty mechanics of the physical plane, we 
 fail to sympathize with the dreams of our Aryan cousins, we 
 may test the breadth of our own philosophic standing accord- 
 ing as we fling away those beliefs as worthless with the feeble 
 ridicule of ignorance, or accept them as a contribution to the 
 large history and knowledge of man. 
 
 With this apology to the modern mind, the recital may be
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 85 
 
 resumed of the Aryan theory of mortal life as contained in 
 the sacred assurances of the ancient religion. 
 
 Kaiomart we may take to represent man in a state mid- 
 way between the corporeal and the spiritual, with vision ex- 
 tending into both worlds. Meschia and Meschiana are drawn 
 down more fully into matter, and are thus subjected to what 
 may be called the Fall. In a Phoenician myth which has 
 passed through Grecian hands a somewhat similar gradation 
 may be found. Aion and Protogonos are the first that enter 
 mortal life. Aion discovers the art of nutriment from fruit 
 trees ; and the offspring of the pair, apparently representing 
 ordinary mortals, are Genos and Genea. These names are 
 but philosophic expressions, Aion is ^Eon, or Time ; Pro- 
 togonos, firstborn, or first parent ; Genos and Genea equally 
 denote race, family, offspring. 
 
 Kaiomart having departed this life before the production 
 of beings of separate sex, it might naturally be supposed that 
 he returned forthwith to his spiritual state. It is probable 
 enough that the cycle of existence was originally understood 
 to denote the regular course of individual life made typical ; 
 but in the development of the theory it must have become 
 doctrinally necessary to account for the close of an epoch as 
 well as for its beginning. Artistically speaking, the idea of a 
 general and specific blossoming of creation, and a simul- 
 taneous resurrection into superior opportunity of life, is more 
 pleasant and picturesque than that of the same results pro- 
 duced, so to speak, insensibly, by the unostentatious coming 
 and going of individuals. And indeed that there are cycles 
 of human development, history tells us ; therefore it is not 
 surprising that a doctrine should have established itself of a 
 cyclic period bounded by a creation and a resurrection of 
 man. 
 
 Geology would lead us to believe that our earth as a con- 
 tinuous abode of man is indefinitely older than is necessary 
 far to outstretch even a number of cycles, regarded as periods
 
 86 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 between which Mother Nature might pause to refresh herself, 
 as it were, between throe and throe, each the creative act 
 which renewed a world. Nevertheless, we shall find it easy 
 to respect the cyclical conception of the history of man, and 
 that without adopting literally the notion that the world's 
 inhabitants die out at zodiacal intervals and are succeeded 
 by a brand new race. How great civilizations fade out and 
 are replaced by young and vigorous developments is a matter 
 beyond the scope of the present argument. 
 
 As, in accordance with the cyclic creed, the day of resur- 
 rection approaches, the evil-door, presumably the personifi- 
 cation of the evil principle, is challenged to effect it. He will 
 strive in vain ; it is not in his province. But, nevertheless, 
 the process begins. The various members which are to form 
 man's supernal body are not drawn from earth as in creation 
 they come one and all from the celestial land. It will be 
 remembered that humanity has been regarded as moving 
 towards the spiritual confines by the reverse process in respect 
 of nutriment to that of creation. After abandoning, degree 
 by degree, the diet of flesh, of milk, of fruit, and of water, 
 man ceases to eat, and yet he does not die. 
 
 One part of the light which is with the sun will enlighten 
 Kaiomart, the other will enlighten the rest of men. Perhaps 
 we may read this as a poetic expression of the fact that the 
 spiritual ray reaches first the spiritual man. The spiritual 
 entities now recognize the substantial forms that are the fit 
 expression of each individual, and all the immortal denizens 
 of the world assemble together with man, who is about to 
 assume the final body, and return to the weightiest life. 
 
 As Kaiomart was the spiritual agent of creation, so 
 Saoshyos fulfils the corresponding function in resurrection ; 
 he is the rekindler. There are also a number of other-world 
 beings who assist : " the Increasers of the Days, who step 
 forward to the maintenance of the pure world '' (Ya$na, 
 xlv. 3).
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 87 
 
 The perishable world has been a protection to the evil and 
 the good, and, however inferior in itself, has become in its 
 maternal office the very creation of the Supreme. But when 
 the dividing is at hand, the state of the wicked, as to their 
 souls, becomes hard. They are not like the demons, without 
 spiritual counterparts (Fravashis) ; but their affinity is about 
 to appear to them in uncomely form, the very image of their 
 souls. The true followers of Ahura-Mazda comfort them- 
 selves during the trying process the separation of the vital 
 powers and consciousness by the prayers that are themselves 
 " the creations of the first world ; " that is to say, of the world 
 they are on the way towards, designated in the same Gathas 
 as " the next world." The picture given is of the whole 
 creation, " bodies together with bones, vital power and form, 
 strength and consciousness, soul and Fravashi," subjected to 
 the dread process, through which into the after-death state 
 the soul's progress is portrayed. In the account itself it is 
 impossible to distinguish the doctrine of a postponed and 
 general, or simultaneous, resurrection, which nevertheless is 
 spoken of as taking place after " the long time " and forming 
 " the perfect resurrection." The soul is finding its proper food 
 and raiment in the truths of the religious hymns ; and pas- 
 sages which we will shortly cite will instance how the journey 
 is understood to begin immediately. 
 
 There is a cyclic account, however, according to which the 
 dead are resuscitated by an elixir which proceeds from the 
 Bull and from the White Man (Kaiomart). Saoshyos gives 
 of this elixir to all mankind, and they enter upon their im- 
 mortality in a world without stain. There is some con- 
 tradiction in the different developments of the legend, for it is 
 otherwise given (Bundaheshn) : " First will the bodily form of 
 Kaiomart uprise, then that of Mashia and Mashiana, after- 
 wards that of the rest of mankind." 
 
 The confusion between the Parsi doctrines of immediate 
 entrance after death into the life of the spiritual world, and of
 
 88 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 a resuscitation postponed until the expiration of a cycle, which 
 requires for its completion the decrepitude of the physical 
 world, is particularly noteworthy for us, seeing that the same 
 dilemma has come down into our Christian ritual. In the 
 Order for the Burial of the Dead there is the old mistranslation 
 of Job, " in my flesh " for " out from my flesh : " there con- 
 fronts it the beautiful account of a sowing in corruption, an 
 uprising in incorruption. There is a paean on the delivery from 
 the burden of the body, and on the decarnate condition which 
 ensues, as a state in which spirits or souls " live," and not only 
 live, but live " in joy and felicity." And yet, as if the actual 
 possession of life, and that a life of joy and of consciousness 
 of the indwelling of God, were not enough to satisfy reason- 
 able expectation, there is a superadded affirmation of a 
 general resurrection at the last day a moment which, how- 
 ever intelligible in the primal meaning of the phrase, is tradi- 
 tionally regarded as marking a remote future period following 
 upon the wreck of the globe. 
 
 But large doctrines like these which sway great portions 
 of humanity for thousands of years ought to be treated with 
 respect rather than with a too hasty and merely intellectual 
 criticism. Our forefathers the Druids, as Julius Caesar re- 
 cords, wished to convince men of this as a primary truth, that 
 souls do not die, but from one set of conditions pass after 
 death to others ; and they were confident, he says, that in 
 this was the greatest excitation to virtue, by the lapsing of 
 the terror of death. For those, then, whose lack of develop- 
 ment prevents their attaining " anastasy " in the true sense of 
 the word ; for persons who departing this life would fail of a 
 better resurrection and, cowering back again (ab aliis trans- 
 euntes ad alias], pass into lower elements, it is perhaps well 
 and hopeful that a belief should continue in a real spiritual 
 consummation, postponed, but somewhile to be reached. 
 Moreover, though humanity, being inharmonious, moves with 
 the irregularities of individualism or at most in a partial
 
 AN. ARYAN ANCESTOR. 89 
 
 national progress ; spiritual spheres, having the unity of their 
 harmony, must consummate periods of development by a 
 movement into fuller light in wholeness and simultaneity. 
 And who can tell how far the great doctrine of a specific 
 earthly resurrection, with its general enhancement of life, 
 may not be due to a confused spiritual memory stirring 
 in humanity ? Why there should be a favourite expectation 
 of rejoining a body composed of a familiar material substance 
 is easily made intelligible by the consideration how difficult 
 it is for the terrestrial mind to appreciate the vigour of trans- 
 corporeal substance, or to realize how, if the life further on 
 appears dim and phantom-like to us, we ourselves may prob- 
 ably appear still more frail, and clad in a ghostlike mist, in 
 the eyes of those who live and upstand in the terrible strength 
 of angelhood. 
 
 The following will exemplify the religious belief of the 
 Aryans on the immediate future of the departing soul, as it 
 concludes its own last earthly day, and enters upon its own 
 resurrection, and its own judgment. 
 
 " Where are those tribunals, where do they assemble, 
 where do they come together, at which a man of the corporeal 
 world gives account for his soul ? Then answered Ahura- 
 Mazda, After the man is dead, after .the man is departed, 
 after his going, the wicked evil-knowing Daevas do work. In 
 the third night, after the coming and lightning of the dav/n " 
 (A vesta, Vendidad, xix. 89-91). 
 
 " Zarathustra asked Ahura-Mazda, O Ahura-Mazda, most 
 munificent spirit, creator of the settlements supplied with 
 creatures, holy one ! when a pious man passes away, where 
 remains his soul that night ? Then said Ahura-Mazda, It 
 sits down near the head, chanting the Gatha Ustavaiti, im- 
 ploring blessedness. . . . On this night the soul has as much 
 joyfulness as his whole living existence comprised. Where 
 dwells his soul the second night ? [The second and third 
 night are described as the first] On the lapse of the third
 
 90 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 night, when the dawn appears, the soul of the pious man 
 goes forward, recollecting itself at the perfume of plants.* 
 To him there seems a wind blowing from the more southern 
 side, from the more southern quarters, a sweet scent more 
 sweet-scented than other winds. Then inhaling that wind 
 with the nose, the soul of the pious man considers, Whence 
 blows the wind, the most sweet-scented wind that I have ever 
 inhaled with the nostrils ? Advancing with this wind, there 
 appears to him what is his own religion [or law, the rule of 
 life to which he has conformed] in the figure of a beautiful 
 maiden . . . with a dazzling face. . . . Then the soul of the 
 pious man speaks to her, asking, What virgin art thou, whom 
 I have seen here as the most beautiful of virgins in form ? 
 Then answers him his own law, I am, O youth, thy good 
 thoughts, good words, good deeds, and good religion, on 
 account of which good religion in thy own possession every 
 one has loved thee for such greatness, and goodness, and 
 beauty, and perfume, and victoriousness, which overcomes 
 enemies, as thou appearest to me. . . . The soul of the pious 
 man first advanced with a footstep placed upon good thought ; 
 secondly, upon good word ; thirdly, upon good action ; fourthly, 
 upon the eternal lights. To him spoke a pious one, previously 
 deceased, asking, How, O pious one, didst thou die? how 
 come away from the fleshly dwellings, . . . from the corporeal 
 world, to the spiritual life, from the perishable to the imperish- 
 able ? how long will have been thy blessing ? Then said 
 Ahura-Mazda, Ask not him whom thou askest, who is come 
 along the fearful, terrible, tremendous path, the separation of 
 body and soul " (Hadokht Nask, ii. ; cf. Arda Viraf, iv. 8-35 ; 
 Mainyo-i-Khard, ii. 110-157). 
 
 * Water was an older symbol, or instrument, 'of revivification : "Beatification 
 of the just after judgment. . . . They have put there the sacred water. The 
 goddess Anat, the great spouse of Anu, will cover thee with her sacred hands. 
 The god lau will transport thee into a place of delights . . . He will place thee 
 in the midst of honey and butter. He will pour into thy mouth reviving water ; 
 thy mouth will be opened for thanksgivings " (Assyrian Fragments, transl. J. 
 Halevy. " Records of the Past," vol. xi.).
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 91 
 
 In the Pazand, sadis or sedish is the term for this period of 
 three days or nights, that the soul remains near the body 
 after death. The Sanskrit equivalent is trirdtrin. In the 
 book of the Mainyo-i-Khard (Spirit of Wisdom) it is written : 
 
 " He who is a world-adorning and spirit-destroying man is 
 so destroyed, in a single punishment of the three days, as a 
 raging fire when water comes upon it" (xxi. 10). 
 
 " Which is the good work . . . ? To wish good for every 
 one . . . and to be undoubting about the existence of God, 
 and the religion, and the soul, and heaven, and the account 
 that is in the three days, and the reality of the resurrection of 
 the dead and the final body " (Ib., Ixiii. 1-7). 
 
 " Be not reliant on life ; since death occurs at last, and 
 dogs and birds destroy the corpse, and the bones fall to the 
 ground ; and during three days (and) nights, the soul sits on 
 the top of the head of the body " (Ib., ii. 1 10-1 14). 
 
 " For three days after dissolution, the soul is supposed to 
 flit round its tenement of clay, in hopes of a re-union " (Vaux, 
 NineveJi). 
 
 In the earlier part of this section, reference was made to 
 the traces of relationship and similarity existing between the 
 Aryan doctrines and those which belong to what Christendom 
 has accepted as its own religious traditions. 
 
 The Aryan approaches the question of the birth-process 
 of death in a detailed and picturesque, it might almost be said 
 matter-of-fact, way. The following passage will exemplify the 
 deeper intensity of religious feeling in the Hebrew : 
 
 " Come, and let us return unto the Lord ; for he hath 
 torn, and he will heal us ; he hath smitten, and he will 
 bind us up. After two days will he revive us : on the third 
 day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then 
 shall we know, we shall follow on to know the Lord ; his going 
 forth is sure as the daybreak, and he will come unto us as the 
 rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth." 
 
 This singular fragment appears in the book of Hosea (vi.
 
 92 . THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 I, 3) quite detached from any context. If we analyze the 
 passage it will be difficult to see what it means if it does 
 not belong to the same kind of prophetic or visionary depic- 
 tion of after-death experience as those cited from the Zoro- 
 astrian books. 
 
 By the loose manner of Hebrew speech the phrase " after 
 two days" is apparently reckoned as equivalent to "after three 
 days " and also to " on the third day," as may be seen from 
 what is quoted above when compared with Esther iv. 16, and 
 v. i, and also with the following : " Come again unto me after 
 three days. . . . They came on the third day, as the king 
 bade, saying, ' Come again on the third day ' " (2 Chron. x. 5 
 and 12). 
 
 The confusion is caused by fractions of days being counted 
 as wholes. From a few moments before a particular day 
 begins to a moment after it is passed, the period is one of 
 three days, for it breaks into three separate days. 
 
 We will refer presently to the Hebrew word used in Hosea 
 to denote resurrection, and dwell for a moment here on its 
 Greek equivalent in the Septuagint. The Greek verb is t%av- 
 ivrri/uii, literally, " forth-up-stand," using the English verb both 
 transitively and intransitively ; and the construction differs 
 slightly from that of the Hebrew original, being in place of 
 " on the third day he will make us upstand," "in the third day 
 we shall forth-upstand," or, to paraphrase the compound, 
 " emerge on a higher plane erect." By a comparison of words 
 the English reader may find the pith of the meaning of this 
 one. We have well-known words compounded of the Greek 
 verb signifying to stand, "apostasy" and "ecstasy," and may 
 transliterate others from the verb above cited, viz. anastasy 
 and exanastasy. A common measure is still manifest in 
 these words. Apostasy is " offstanding " in the sense of 
 defection; hypostasy is subsistence; ecstasy is "outstanding" 
 in the sense in which (in the Persian passage already quoted) 
 the spirit is described as finding its body a loose garment,
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 93 
 
 which, under certain conditions, it is possible to stand out of. 
 Anastasy is "upstanding" used in many senses, and is the 
 well-known word which is usually and inaccurately translated 
 resurrection. The invariable German rendering of the word 
 is auferstekung, to which our Anglo-Saxon " upstanding " is 
 the exact equivalent. The word ex-ana-stasy or "out-up- 
 standing " combines the notion of ecstasy, or the spirit's 
 freedom, with that of anastasy or its elevation. Whoever 
 originally applied this Greek term to the subject in question, 
 had evidently the clearest understanding of the metaphysics 
 of the expression. 
 
 Our word resurrection is confusing, for it implies re-rising, 
 or rising again, which is a thought quite compatible with the 
 Parsi conception of a primal state of existence to which the 
 spirit returns at death ; but that is not what is intended by 
 those who currently use the word. If it is designed to mean 
 a re-establishment of the physical organism, that sense is not 
 to be found in the original term. 
 
 The Aryan influences acting upon the Hebrews evidently 
 tended to relax in some degree the reverential intensity with 
 which the Hebrew mind had been wont to regard the 
 mysteries of life. The following passage from the Talmud 
 exemplifies a cheering view of the process of death : 
 
 " Rabba, assisting at the agony of Rab Nachman, said to 
 him, Master, I would that thou wouldst appear to me after 
 thy death. Rab Nachman appeared unto him. Rabba asked 
 of him, Hast thou suffered much ? As a hair that one should 
 draw out of a cup of milk " (Moed Katan, 28 a). 
 
 It is naturally to be expected that Rabbinical literature 
 will show traces of the Mazdayasnian lore relative to the 
 threefold period of death's gestation of the soul. The follow- 
 ing may serve as instances : 
 
 " Tradition of Bar Caphra : There is supreme force of woe 
 on the third day only ; for, during a three-days' space, a soul 
 wanders around the sepulchre, expecting to return into the
 
 94 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 body. But when it sees that the aspect of the countenance is 
 altered, it recedes and relinquishes the body " (Bereschith 
 R., c. 7). 
 
 " For the entire space of three days a soul flies above the 
 body, expecting to return " (S. D., Job. xiv. 22, and Vajikra 
 R., xviii.). 
 
 " For three days there is vehemence of mourning, because 
 thus far the form of the face is recognized " (Koheleth 
 R., xii. 5). 
 
 " Why, after a three-days' space, can a poor man lay aside 
 mourning? . . . After a three-days' space the flesh corrupts, 
 and the looks are changed " (Tanchuma, f. xlvii. i). 
 
 The authority referred to for this change is a passage in 
 Job: 
 
 " Thou destroyest him irretrievably, and he passes ; 
 Thou changes! his countenance, and sendest him away. 
 Do his sons come to honour, he knoweth nought of it ; 
 Are they brought low, he perceives it not of them. 
 His flesh only bears its own sufferings, 
 And his soul groans only on its own account " (Job xiv. 20-22). 
 
 " They go forth to a sepulchre and look on the dead for 
 three days " (Massecheth Semachoth, viii.). 
 
 " They make no attestation respecting a dead person 
 except within three days after his death. After the three 
 days' time they do not attest concerning him, for the aspect 
 of his face is altered" (Jebamoth, f. 120, i). 
 
 A similar tradition may be traced in the fifth century B.C. 
 The ghost of Polydoros (Euripides, " Hecuba," 32) speaks : 
 " Being raised up this third daylight, having deserted my 
 body." 
 
 In the Johannine story of Lazarus (John xi. 17, 39) the 
 fourth day is adduced as affording conclusive evidence of 
 death. 
 
 The myth of Jonah, probably disfigured as it is from its 
 original, may occur to us as having been cited in relation to
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 95 
 
 this doctrine of the triple period occupied by the death process. 
 The interior of the whale as a residence affords a powerful 
 metaphor for the state of a transitional being during the three 
 days of death, for there would indeed be there neither seafar- 
 ing nor dry land, but a veritable suspension of realizable 
 existence. 
 
 According to such studious Rabbis among the modern 
 Jews as are conversant with Bible, Talmud, and Gospels alike, 
 and hold out yearning and sadly unregarded hands towards 
 their Christian fellows, the expression " son of man " denotes 
 man in general, but as viewed in his immortal aspect ; it so 
 comes to signify a man who is regenerate, or born again, and 
 so has become the glorified heir of the defunct "old Adam." 
 
 In this general sense, or rather in a particular sense 
 typifying the general sense, would by them be understood such 
 expressions as these : " As Jonah was three days and three 
 nights in the whale's belly; so will the son of man be three days 
 and three nights in the heart of the earth " (Matt. xii. 40). 
 
 " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up 
 [literally, "awaken it"]. . . . He spoke of the temple of his 
 body"* (John ii. 19, 21, cf. Matt. xxvi. 61). 
 
 "We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is 
 made with hands, and in three days I will build another made 
 without hands" (Mark xiv. 58 ; cf. xv. 29). 
 
 "The son of man is about to be delivered up into the 
 hands of men, and they will kill him, and the third day he 
 will be raised [literally, " awakened "] " (Matt. xvii. 22). 
 
 " We remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet 
 alive, After three days I am raised [literally, "am awakened "]" 
 (Matt, xxvii. 63). 
 
 * The sense of this mystical allusion would seem quite obvious, were it not for 
 the fact that the building of the naos was one of the labours set down for a 
 Messiah: "When King Messias shall awake, given in the north, he will come 
 and build the house of the sanctuary which has been given in the south" (Bemid- 
 bar, xiv., and Cant. iv. 16). Perhaps the saying was uttered in one allusive sense, 
 and understood in another.
 
 96 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " He began to teach them, that the son of man must suffer 
 many things . . . and be killed, and after three days uprise. 
 And he spake the saying openly. And Peter took him, and 
 began to rebuke him. But he turning about, and seeing his 
 disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, satan : 
 for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of 
 men" (Mark viii. 31-33). 
 
 " He used to teach his disciples and say to them, The son 
 of man is delivered up into the hands of men, and they will 
 kill him, and though killed, after three days he will raise 
 himself [literally, " upstand himself." Here we find the word 
 used for resurrection which was examined above in its form 
 anastasy\ But they understood not the saying, and were 
 afraid to ask him " (Mark ix. 31, 32). 
 
 " And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and 
 nations do they look upon their dead bodies three days and a 
 half,* and suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. 
 . . . and after the three days and a half the breath of life 
 from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet " 
 (Apocalypse of John, xi. 9, n). 
 
 These mystical passages we leave as we find them ; if 
 there be a triplicity in the process of death as the mature soul 
 traverses and solidifies the essence of its experience of child- 
 hood, youth, and full age, it would be as true to the Aryan as 
 
 * The expression, "three days and a half," probably had a meaning with the 
 writer. In Apocalyptic and Talmudical books, Vespasian is said to have besieged 
 Jerusalem three years and a half, Antiochus also, Hadrian Bethlehem for a like 
 time, and Nebusaradanus to have laid waste Jerusalem for three years and a half. 
 The judgment of Nebuchadnezzar and Vespasian was said to occupy a like time. 
 Perhaps the number is meant to imply the extreme of purgatory, for it is said that 
 the judgment of the impious in Gehenna only lasts for twelve months. Clement 
 of Alexandria describes this mysterious period as half a week, which brings it to 
 the period specified in the Apocalypse. " The half of the week Nero held sway, 
 and in the holy city Jerusalem placed the abomination ; and in the half of the 
 week he was taken away, and Otho, and Galba, and Vitellius. And Vespasian 
 rose to the supreme power, and destroyed Jerusalem, and desolated the holy place. 
 And that such are the facts of the case, is clear to him that is able to understand, 
 as the prophet said " (Strom. I. xxi.). There was evidently something to be read 
 between the lines here.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR* 97 
 
 to the Jew ; and any obscurity with regard to it would be 
 only in our apprehension of so recondite a nativity. 
 
 The haze to which we have pointed as floating for so long 
 a time over the subject of a concurrent and remote resurrection, 
 as distinguished from the continuance of the soul's existence 
 in immediate life, may be found in the story of Lazarus, which 
 is no doubt an expansion of some incidents in the life of 
 Jesus. Referring to the brother who is apparently departed, the 
 Master says, "He will rise again [literally, "upstand himself"]." 
 The sister replies, " I know that he will in the uprise \anas- 
 tasis, auferstehung upstanding] in the uttermost day." The 
 final day to the sages meant probably the mortal life's final 
 day the uttermost hour of each individual on earth ; but in 
 the popular view this idea would seem to have brought a 
 spiritual fact into too near and familiar relations for it to be 
 welcomed. A lesson we may safely draw from the life of 
 Jesus is that while standing on this plane he also stood, and 
 stood consciously and with open eyes, on the grander interior 
 plane of spirit. He responds in splendid and majestic utter- 
 ance : " I am," embodied here before you, " the upstanding 
 and the life [an idiomatic expression, possibly meaning by its 
 conjunction of substantives, I am, or represent, the anastasis, 
 or "upstanding life"]. He that confides in me [and realizes this 
 fact of the higher life], though he die [which is a temporal 
 fact only], yet will he live, and every one that lives and con- 
 fides in me will never die." In other words, every one who 
 attains to the realization of the spiritual fact as it is, will 
 know that death is nothing and life is everything. The day 
 he dies he will begin to awaken in the fitting paradise of his 
 state. 
 
 We have brought forward this familiar account not only 
 because it sheds light through the haze that lies upon the 
 Aryan, and also upon the Jewish and Christian doctrines, but 
 because of a somewhat fanciful relation which it bears to our 
 Aryan ancestor. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Kaiomart, as we have found him in the Zoroastrian 
 books, is regarded as "the firstfruits of them that slept" 
 " Kaiomart shall rise first \auferstehen, or " upstand," as the 
 Germans render the original text], afterwards the rest of 
 mankind." 
 
 The reported words of Jesus, " I am the resurrection " 
 (" upstanding "), we have only in the Greek language. If we 
 had the veritable Aramaic in which he is presumed to have 
 spoken, the equivalent expression would have sounded some- 
 thing like Aya ha Kaidhmat. 
 
 If one of the mages, then, who are related to have dis- 
 covered by astromancy the cradle of his birth, had been 
 among the auditors of Jesus, it would have sounded to his 
 ears as if the mysterious Rabbi of Galilee were identifying 
 himself with the Aryan representative of the life that upstands 
 and vanquishes death. He might have thought that he heard 
 a voice, I am Kaiomart 
 
 This seems to be a curious fancy, and nothing more, for it 
 is held that the Aryan word Kaiomart and the Semitic word 
 Kaiahmat have no root affinity. 
 
 There is another coincidence in respect of these words 
 which is equally curious, and may be considered with interest 
 by those who hold that in the sayings of Jesus there is a 
 by-meaning which has not always been perceived. In the 
 ancient symbolism, the male generally represents the more 
 spiritual, the female the more physical life. If we could 
 entertain the hypothesis that the word Kaiahmat would 
 remind a Zoroastrian of the glorified Adam of his legend, 
 the second term would readily represent that other and more 
 earthly half of nature which is wedded to the celestial part ; 
 and the words would run, " I am the Kaiahmat and the 
 Eve." The word Eve is merely the Hebrew Havvah, Life, in 
 the Septuagint rendered by Zoe (Gen. iii. 20). The actual 
 word in the Greek gospel text from which the quotation is 
 made (John xi. 25) is also Zoe. The Hebrew word Hawaii,
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 99 
 
 as a kind of proper name, might possibly be familiar to the 
 Hebrews to whom Aramaic was the vernacular. 
 
 An interesting piece of evidence may be adduced that the 
 word which Jesus used to express resurrection was virtually 
 Kaidhmat. The word to rise, which forms its root, is used in 
 many senses, as indeed is the Greek word anastasis, which 
 signifies insurrection, and even the rising to one's feet from a 
 chair, as well as upstanding in the sense of reaching the life 
 after death. The Hebrew word employed in the same sense 
 in the passage we have quoted from Hosea is choomun, con- 
 taining the same root Km with Kaidhmat. This root Km, 
 Kilm, means also to establish, to set upright, to rise, to raise. 
 In Mark v. 41, we find a record of the power of Jesus in 
 restoring a poor girl who was nearly dead. He says, accord- 
 ing to the English translation, " Maiden, arise," and by a very 
 rare chance the Aramaic words of this encouraging address 
 are given us, transliterated into Greek : Taleitha koum [or Kowyu-t]. 
 This is the identical root of Kaidhmat* 
 
 * The word shows but slight variation through a number of dialects. In 
 Syriac it is nou-chachma or nu-choma; Hebraic, kouhma; Peshito and old Chaldee, 
 chiamta, chaiman; Chaldee and Arabic, kaimna and kaem, to raise ; kaidmat, one 
 who raises up the people. Arabic kiyam, standing upright, rising up, making an 
 insurrection ; kimat, plural kiyam, stature (kayydm, subsisting, eternal ; kayyimat, 
 straightness, orthodoxy) ; kiydmat, the resurrection, last day, last judgment. There 
 is a modern Persian work entitled " Kiainat Nama," or "Resurrection-Compen- 
 dium." The word in late Persian or Arabic will bear a trace of its popular Jewish 
 signification, through Mohammedan influences. 
 
 The root kum may be seen in our own language in ac-cum-ulate, where it 
 signifies rising, swelling, and so, mound or heap. It comes to us through Greek 
 KVTTTU, ntfjifios, KV/J.U; Latin, cumulus, tumeo, tumulus (tomb), cyma ; French, 
 comble, cime. A swelling with the idea of ripeness (found in the uses of tumeo] 
 associates it with /cueo>, /curjyua. The Sanscrit is cvay&mi ; Pazand, kdma, lust; 
 keym, womb, old Bactrian cagemd; Pali kdmo, wish, desire, lust; Tibetan, kampa, 
 to long for ; Egyptian, khem, the Lingaic emblem, also the bull symbol. In 
 Aryana, as in Egypt, "these images only symbolize in a very expressive manner 
 the creative force of nature, without obscene intention. It is another way to 
 express celestial generation, which should cause the deceased to enter into a new 
 life " (Mariette Bey). A section of humanity has exalted shame into a religion, 
 and taboos all who will not bow down to its dark idol. And for these it will be 
 difficult to realize that in perfect simplicity and good faith the phallic exaltation 
 which repeats itself in response to the influx of the spirit of life, might appear to 
 the Egyptian thinker to afford an analogical aid to the faith in the uprise of
 
 ioo THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Kaiomart is a word variously transliterated by foreign 
 writers, and very variously derived. We find Kaiomorts, Keho- 
 morts, Kajumert, Kayomers, Kaiomurs, Kajomorts, Kayumart, 
 Gaydmard, Gayomars, Gaiomard, Gayomart, Gayo-mareta, 
 Gaydmaratan, Gaya-maretan, Gayomarathno, Gaiumardda, 
 Gueie'hemerete', Giomert, etc. It has been said to mean mortal 
 life, because Khai in Hebrew signifies living. (Nephesh khayd, 
 a living animal-soul, is the term applied to Adam in Genesis.) 
 It has also been derived from Sanskrit, kaya, body, form, and 
 mrita, earth ; and from Syriac words signifying the Living 
 Word. On the other hand, it might as probably come from 
 Zend gao, bull, and mard, man. As expressing their earliest 
 mythical hero, it is possible that the word Kaiomart may be 
 archaic in the language of the Zoroastrians, and that its 
 authentic roots may be difficult to find. In spite of the 
 singular similarity between Kaiomart and Kaiahmat, as well 
 as between a hero who is the firstfruits of a terrestrial and 
 then of a resurrection life, and resurrection itself regarded as 
 personified ; in spite, moreover, of the fact that a common 
 root is found to join the Hebrew and Aryan words signifying 
 to rise, we cannot convince ourselves that there is anything 
 more in the resemblance than one of those singular appear- 
 ances of identity such as are wont to lead too enthusiastic 
 philologists astray. 
 
 In the clearness of their avowal that the truest image and 
 ideal of man is to be found in his spiritual rather than in his 
 corporeal principle, the Christian Scriptures transcend the 
 
 individual consciousness in resurrection after resurrection of the human form. In 
 the native processes of the world we are in, must lie hidden the alphabets of the 
 language of our future. But through the confusion due to warped social arrange- 
 ments and unvitalized creeds, the letters of the divine handwriting in us may come 
 to be even a perplexity and a scandal. 
 
 The Hebrew or Chaldee word is traceable through the Aryan tongues ; the 
 Pahlvi kimunistan, to wish, to desire, to ask (Sanscrit kdma, a desire), has its 
 substantive k&meh, for which the corresponding Pazand word is kh&stan, which 
 also means to rise, get up ; so that it is considered by philologists that the verb is 
 in affinity with the Chaldee kum, kirn, koum, kaem ; Hebrew qum.
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 101 
 
 notion of Kaiomart as the typical man, represented though 
 he be as essentially an immortal being. We may sum his 
 attributes as follows : he is amphibious, by reason of being a 
 heavenly creature and yet approaching earth, not sundered 
 into sex, radiant, white, with eyes looking up to heaven. He 
 is the firstborn of pure creatures, and the closest to the 
 Heavenly Understanding, the first recipient of the commands 
 of the Deity, the first who heard his mind, the Son of the 
 Spirit of Life, and the first step from spirit in the direction 
 of the production of the corporeal world, and, as the herald 
 of men, the first to return by resurrection to "the pure 
 world," "the wise realm," "the truthful kingdom," "the best 
 place." 
 
 Reference has been made to the doctrine of the entrance 
 of man into the terrestrial sphere by a gradual corporealization, 
 and of his return to the primary existence by a reverse process, 
 until such food as we know of is untasted and yet man dies 
 not. Parallels have also been drawn from the apparently 
 disarranged myth of the Hebrew Scripture, and from the 
 interpretation of it by the Rabbins in a Kabbalistic sense not 
 unlike the doctrine of the Zoroastrians. 
 
 The Pauline writings, which afford a concluding illustra- 
 tion of this parable of creation, still further develop the 
 subject, and convey a double conception including at once 
 both mortal and spiritual life, the latter as the triumphant 
 element. The Adam is taken as representative of man in 
 his materializing or falling state that is, as an unspiritual, 
 soulic (psychic), and pre-eminently terrestrial being ; he is the 
 living animal-soul. The Christ idea (the word having ap- 
 parently a developed sense from the early conception of a 
 Messiah or anointed king) is of man on his upward journey 
 man the spiritual, as represented by the standard uplifted by 
 Jesus, which harmonized with a long-reverenced ideal. 
 
 The notion is of man weighed down by terrestrial sluggish- 
 ness until awakened by the advent and the upleading of a
 
 102 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 messenger from the bright and glad heavenly state, and thus 
 raised from a circle of depressed existence, from which with- 
 out help he was slow to emerge. A string of familiar passages 
 will best convey the sentiment 
 
 " If there is no upstanding of the dead, even Christ has 
 not been awakened. ... If it were in this life only we had 
 hope in Christ, we are more to be pitied than all men. But 
 now Christ has been raised from the dead, the prime * of 
 them who have fallen asleep. For since through man is death, 
 so through man is upstanding of dead : for as in the Adam 
 all die, so also in the Christ will all be quickened (made live 
 creatures). . . . The last enemy that is to be brought to 
 nought is death. . . . And when all things have been sub- 
 jected to him, then also will the Son himself be made subject 
 unto him that subjected all things unto him, that God may 
 be the all in all. . . . An unspiritual (animal-soulic) body 
 is sown, a spiritual body is upwakened. If there is an un- 
 spiritual body, there is also a spiritual. So also it is written, 
 The first man Adam became a living animal soul; the last 
 Adam a life-giving spirit. Howbeit the spiritual is not first, 
 but the animal-soulic, afterwards the spiritual. The first 
 man is of earth, earthy ; the second man is from heaven" 
 (i Cor. xv.). 
 
 In the following, " ye died," seems to represent the Adam 
 state, and the word Christ the quality of supernal life, as well 
 as the person typifying it : " Ye died, and your life has been 
 hidden with Christ in God : when Christ, your life, is mani- 
 fested, then will ye also be manifested with him in glory." . . . 
 Deaden earth-qualities and evil, " seeing that ye have stript 
 off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, 
 which is being renewed unto full knowledge after the image 
 of him that created him ; where there is no such thing as 
 
 * Airupxn has a double sense as first both in time and quality ; it is commonly 
 used metaphorically, as in "the very prime of wisdom," "of philosophy." In 
 Plato (Prot. 343, xxviii.) certain maxims are recorded as being inscribed on the 
 temple at Delphi^ and dedicated to Apollo as " the firstfruits of wisdom."
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 103 
 
 Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, non-Greek, 
 Scythian, bond, free ; but Christ is all and in all " (Col. iii.). 
 
 " The son of his love . . . who is an image of the invisible 
 God, firstborn of all creation . . . original, firstborn from 
 among the dead " (Col. i.). 
 
 "The man Jesus Christ . . . manifested in flesh, justified 
 in spirit, seen by angels, preached among Gentiles, believed 
 on in the world, received up in glory," . . . "who brought 
 death to nought, but brought life and incorruption to light 
 through the good tidings." Some " saying that the upstanding 
 has already befallen," turn aside, (i and 2 Tim.) 
 
 " Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the 
 spirit, in which also he went and preached unto the spirits 
 in prison . . . good tidings preached to dead men also" 
 (i Peter). 
 
 "The power of his upstanding ... if by any means I 
 may reach to the upstanding from the dead. Not that I did 
 attain or am already perfected. ... I reckon not myself to 
 have yet laid hold. . . . The state we belong to is in the 
 heavens " (Phil. iii.). 
 
 "Ye have a chrism (Christ-unction) from the Holy One. 
 . . . We have passed over out of death into life, because we 
 love. . . . Let us love, because he first loved us" (i John iv.). 
 
 These passages are mixed with much mystical matter of 
 various kinds and value, generated at a time when there was 
 an extraordinary spiritual stir, and consequently a conscious- 
 ness apt to over-stimulate ; but the quotations are clear 
 enough to show a complete theory of an amphibious con- 
 stitution of man, represented by " an old man," a typical or 
 primal representative of bodily life, and a " new man," the 
 type, herald, and kindler of the supernal life. They show, 
 too, creation and resurrection as forming a cycle, and even 
 evince a tendency to shift the simple cycle from each indi- 
 vidual to whom it belongs to a composite cyclical event. The 
 conception which they contain of a double Adam, or of man
 
 104 T & E FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 in polar opposite attitudes, may be illustrated from Talmudic 
 lore. The orthodox Rabbinical views, as given in the Talmud, 
 being fairly attributable in part to the new lights let in upon 
 the Hebrews through their intercourse with the Median sages, 
 will complete for us the not inharmonious chain of the myths 
 of the ancestry of man, both Aryan and Semitic. 
 
 Mr. Taylor, the editor of the excellent edition of Pirqe 
 Abotk, refers to the double idea of Adam or man, constituting 
 " the doctrine that there is a correspondence in all respects 
 between the upper world and the lower : ' Whatever exists 
 above, exists also below.' Thus there is an archetypal and 
 celestial Adam analogous to the lower Adam, and made 
 literally in the image of God. There is also a familia above 
 corresponding to the human familia below, with respect to 
 which it is said, ' May it be Thy pleasure, O Lord our God, 
 to make peace in the family above, and in the family below ' 
 (Berakoth, 16 b, 17 a). The condition or action of either of 
 these communities must have its analogue in the other. ' He 
 who occupies himself in Thorah for its own sake makes peace 
 in the family above and in the family below. . . . Rab said, 
 ' It is as if he built a palace above and below. . . . Moreover 
 he protects the whole world, etc., and brings the redemption 
 nigh ' (Sanhedr., 99 b)." 
 
 Again, " a conception which pervades the Midrash litera- 
 ture is that there is an ' upper ' and a ' lower ' Adam : a 
 celestial man, made strictly in the image of God, and a ter- 
 restrial man corresponding in detail to his archetype, of which 
 he is the material adumbration. This twofold conception 
 makes it difficult at times to estimate the precise value of the 
 brief enigmatical sayings of the Rabbis on the Creation 
 and the Fall. The matter is further complicated by their 
 tendency to ignore the distinction between the potential and 
 the actual : between the embryo and its development : 
 between the ' idea ' and its temporal manifestation. 
 
 "There are two aspects of the statement that man was
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 105 
 
 made in the qelem, or image, of God, according as we regard 
 the resemblance to God as predicated of the actual man or of 
 his archetype ; and, as a consequence of this, there are also 
 two ways of regarding the Fall, viz. (i) as a loss of the 
 Divine image in which man was actually created, and (2) as a 
 falling away of the terrestrial Adam from his archetype. In 
 the ' Book of the Generations of Adam,' the Divine likeness 
 is described as not wholly lost but perpetuated : ' God created 
 man in the LIKENESS of God . . . Adam begat a son in his 
 own LIKENESS, after his image (Gen. v. i, 3) ; on which 
 Ramban remarks, ' It is known that all that are born of living 
 beings are in the likeness and image of their parents ; but 
 because Adam was exalted in his likeness and his image, for 
 it is said of him that In the likeness of God made he him, it 
 says expressly here that his offspring likewise were in that 
 exalted likeness, but it does not say this of Cain and Abel, 
 not wishing to dilate upon them, etc.' This agrees with the 
 Targum of Jonathan, which introduces the remark that 
 ' before this Eve bare Cain, who was not like him (Adam),' 
 etc." This idea of an earthward development will remind us 
 of the Zoroastrian beliefs, and especially of the conception of 
 Kaiomart as being responsive to the mind of the Divinity, 
 while Maschia and Maschiana typify human beings who are 
 not on the prophetic heights of humanity, but are of its 
 animal plane ; and we may be reminded of the beautiful 
 counterblast to unhealthy asceticism which we have quoted, 
 that man the spiritual must, as things are, succeed rather than 
 precede man the unspiritual. Man the spiritual, we may say, 
 is built up or strengthened from man the corporeal ; large and 
 healthy root (postulating due openness to the Divine sunlight) 
 makes large and wholesome flower. 
 
 The superficially opposing views which we have instanced 
 can all be reconciled in the paradox that the Fall of man is 
 his Rise ; the earthward pilgrimage well pursued is the way 
 of heavenly strength.
 
 jo6 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Creation, according to the Talmud, is not to be regarded 
 as complete in Adam, or, as we should say, in the protoplastic 
 state : " Everything that was created in the six days of Beres- 
 chith needs ' making ' (i.e. preparation or concoction). The 
 mustard, for example, needs sweetening ; lupines need 
 sweetening ; wheat needs to be ground ; even man needs 
 amendment" (Bereschith Rabbah, XI.). "According to this 
 view," says Mr. Taylor, " the ' image ' and ' likeness ' is that to 
 which man approximates? So we logically come to this as 
 the outcome of the old philosophic myths when brought 
 together : Resurrection and creation are complemental ; the 
 spirit leaves its primary state, but by a fall which should 
 inspire no hyperascetic horror ; and it returns with a fresh 
 armful, so to speak, of life and experience, to a state nigher 
 than before to the Divine likeness of its origin. To infringe 
 the laws of the lower Adam is to be a starveling in life, and 
 miss the way that leads up to the true upstanding. " The 
 first Adam reached from the earth to the firmament, for it is 
 said that he was created upon or above the earth " (Chagiga, 
 12 a). "Twice didst thou form me" (writes the commentator, 
 as cited by Mr. Taylor), " at first high, then low." But the 
 regeneration is the old spiritual generation more fully realized. 
 
 " The sonship of Israel," says Mr. Taylor, " implies their 
 possession of the Divine likeness in a higher degree than 
 Adam, or man in general. . . . The primal man, the embryo 
 of the race, is created an adumbration of Elohim ; Israel is 
 singled out for the distinction of sonship to IHVH." We 
 who are of Aryan origin may not claim to any special dis- 
 tinction over Gentile humanity, but prefer to rank according 
 as we are found. The less intensely Judaic of the Rabbis, 
 moreover, would appear to have preferred the general to the 
 special ground. " R. Obadiah of Sforno dilates upon man's 
 faculty of acquiring a perfection with which he was not 
 specifically created. He remarks . . . that ' In imagine ' im- 
 plies the twofold possibility, first, of rising to perfection by
 
 AN ARYAN ANCESTOR. 107 
 
 means of wisdom through which the love and fear of God are 
 acquired, and, secondly, of lapsing into chaos and perishing, 
 according to the words of the Psalmist (xlix. 21), ' If he will 
 not understand, he will be like the beasts that perish ' [' Man 
 that is in honour (his heavenly birthright and spiritual state) 
 and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish '] ; for if 
 man had been wholly spiritual he might have been called 
 actually Elohim, a word which is applied not only to God but 
 to intellectual and incorporeal beings, as angels, and also to 
 judges, in respect of the mind . . . which properly belongs 
 to them ; but since he is in part material he is described, not 
 as Elokim, but in lower terms, as ' /;/ the image of Elohim' " 
 
 These Hebrew subtleties may prove tedious, but we must 
 not forget that the sages had to work out their thoughts in a 
 narrow and constraining epoch. We who have the privilege 
 of expanding our lungs in a freer air may treat Aryan and 
 Semite as brothers, and make harmonious philosophy of our 
 own from the most luminous we can find of their suggestions.
 
 ro8 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 
 
 IN the works of Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller of the 
 thirteenth century, it is said of the founder of Buddhism, " Si 
 fuisset Christianus, fuisset apud Deum maximus factus." 
 
 Had Sakya-muni risen from the dead to find himself 
 the head of a Therapeutic, Ebionite, Nazirite, or Essene com- 
 munity, or of a Christian monastery of the period before the 
 faith was absorbed into a political institution, and martyrdom 
 exchanged for dominion, he would probably have taken it 
 for granted that he was among an unknown family of his 
 own disciples. " The monastic rules of the Buddhists, found in 
 the Pratimoksha (a work dating from B.C.), are in their general 
 tone, and even in some particulars, wonderfully like those 
 adopted in the West." * 
 
 A student of that primitive faith which has become trans- 
 formed into modern Christianity may now and again, in the 
 difficulties of critical analysis, find himself indulging a wish 
 for the discovery of a fifth Gospel. He would welcome the 
 simple and unadulterated collection of inspired sayings which 
 Matthew is recorded as having made in the original Hebraic 
 tongue ; he would even be glad to discover the Gospel of 
 Marcion, the Evangel according to the Egyptians, or the 
 Nazarenes, or the Hebrews, or any one of those numerous 
 orderly narratives referred to by Luke, the polished and 
 poetically-minded editor of later days. Or the English scholar 
 
 * Vide, S. Beal, " A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese ; " Spence 
 Hardy, "Eastern Monachism. "
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 109 
 
 might be both inquisitive and proud if among ancient British 
 relics there could but be disentombed a record giving the 
 unconventional views of Simon the Zealot, who is said to 
 have travelled westward as far as our island, and to have 
 been crucified here. Or if any of the notes of unbelieving 
 Thomas should be found, rendered into the languages of the 
 countries he is traditionally reported to have visited, Parthia, 
 Persia, India, there would indeed be a feast for the curious. 
 
 The difficulty with Buddhism is not that there are too few 
 records, but too many. The Buddhist canon in China alone 
 includes nearly fifteen hundred distinct works. 
 
 The peculiar interest in Chinese versions of books that have 
 their origin in India, is that they afford a security that the 
 originals have not been tampered with, or rather a means 
 of discovering in what portions they are scarcely open to 
 suspicion of modification of their primitive form. Wherever is 
 found a parallelism, amounting almost to identity, between 
 passages of a work in Pali (the native tongue of Buddhism), 
 and a Chinese version of it made fifteen hundred years ago, 
 the evidence is good that the passage so found has remained 
 intact during that period at least, in spite of those changes 
 of sectarian feeling, which almost insensibly leave their marks 
 upon a text. 
 
 A translation from Chinese into English of an authentic 
 Buddhist work,* when compared with a version already made 
 from the Pali,f affords an excellent verification of Buddhist 
 doctrines before they had become thinly drawn out into 
 intellectuality, lost in the mazes of metaphysics, or extended 
 into florid idolatry to suit the ignorant. 
 
 Between five or six centuries before the era by which we 
 reckon, is the date of the young prince who grew up into the 
 
 * "Texts from the Buddhist Canon, commonly known as ' Dhammapada. ' " 
 Translated from the Chinese by S. Beal. 
 
 t " Buddhaghosha's Parables." Translated from Burmese by Capt. H. T. 
 Rogers, R.E. With an Introduction, containing "Buddha's Dhammapadam," 
 or " Path of Virtue ; " translated from Pali, by F. Max Miiller.
 
 no THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 commanding prophet, the founder of Buddhism. When he 
 died, leaving no written teachings behind him as the story 
 goes his cousin and disciple, Ananda, took up the task of 
 collecting the words of wisdom that his memory, and possibly 
 the memory of others also, had stored. Probably a great 
 portion, although put into form, was held in memory not 
 in manuscript and only promulgated orally. Councils of 
 disciples met to revise these growing collections growing 
 first, no doubt, out of accruing recollections, afterwards by the 
 additions of ingenious commentators, editors, and improvers. 
 It must not be forgotten that the prophet did not launch his 
 gospel upon ears unaccustomed to the words of philosophy, 
 but introduced it into the midst of the grand and long- 
 established religious tenets of his country, from which beliefs 
 moreover his own differed, as would appear, rather by being 
 a heightening or revival than a contradiction. 
 
 The third of these Buddhist councils was held under King 
 Asoka, about two centuries and a half before our era. Of this 
 Asoka there are authentic inscriptions in existence of the 
 date named. As a Hindu versifier of the present generation 
 writes : 
 
 " There have I stood where Asok's pillar high 
 
 Through thousand years doth Asok's mandates bear ; 
 There still it stands unmoved athwart the sky ; 
 One of the mightiest world did ever rear." 
 
 Whether perpetuated in writing, or orally, as was the manner 
 of ancient priests, whose memories, by practice and through the 
 worldly uneventfulness of their life, far transcended what we 
 know of memory while probably they had division of labour 
 even in tradition, and no single priest knew more than a part 
 of the whole, the Buddhistic collections were soon gathered 
 into a canon bearing the name of " The Three Baskets." But, 
 in spite of the anxious care that had been bestowed, the pious 
 collectors had been human, with their little tendencies to bias, 
 their little incapacities of understanding, like ourselves, and
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. Ill 
 
 there soon came to be disputes among the defenders of the 
 faith. 
 
 The first redaction is said to have taken place immediately 
 after the death of Sakya-muni, under the care of five hundred 
 monks, three of the principal disciples of the master sharing 
 the task of gathering together his words. The next redaction 
 took place in about a century, for discord had already arisen, 
 and the Buddhist leaders felt the necessity of assembling to 
 decide upon difficult questions of authenticity. 
 
 Something over four centuries after the time of the master 
 there were eighteen separate sects of Buddhists. Eighteen 
 sects in four hundred years ! At the same rate, this would 
 only allow Christendom in its eighteen hundred years to have 
 eighty bodies dissenting from one another. 
 
 In his preface to the " Dhammapada," Max Muller refers 
 to "the problem, so often started, whether it is possible to 
 distinguish between Buddhism and the personal teaching of 
 Buddha." He argues as follows : " We possess the Buddhist 
 canon, and whatever is found in that canon we have a right 
 to consider as the orthodox Buddhist doctrine. But as there 
 has been no lack of efforts in the Christian theology to dis- 
 tinguish between the doctrine of the founder of our religion and 
 that of the writers of the Gospels ; to go beyond the canon of 
 the New Testament, and to make the Ao'yta of the Master the 
 only solid rule of faith, so the same want was felt at a very 
 early period among the followers of Buddha. King Asoka, 
 the Indian Constantine, had to remind the assembled priests 
 at the great council which had to settle the Buddhist canon 
 that 'what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said.' 
 
 " Works attributed to Buddha, but declared to be apocry- 
 phal, or even heterodox, existed already at that time (246 B.C.). 
 Thus we are by no means without authority for distinguishing 
 between Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha ; the only 
 question is, Whether in our time such a separation is still 
 practicable.
 
 H2 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " My belief is," continues Professor Miiller, " that, in 
 general, all honest inquirers must oppose a ' No ' to this 
 question, and confess that it is useless to try to cast a glance 
 beyond the boundaries of the Buddhist canon. What we find 
 in the canonical books in the so-called 'Three Baskets' is 
 orthodox Buddhism and the doctrine of Buddha, similarly as 
 we must accept in general whatever we find in the Four 
 Gospels as orthodox Christianity and the doctrine of Christ." 
 
 This is a most lame and impotent conclusion, and in each 
 case in which an accepted Christian text has been discovered 
 to be the gloss of a commentator, and not found in the 
 earliest manuscripts, and is at the same time manifestly at 
 variance from the doctrine of the Founder, Professor M tiller's 
 argument can evidently be reduced to an absurdity. Had 
 he said simply that the Three Baskets are the accepted 
 scriptures of orthodox Buddhism, the Four Gospels of 
 orthodox Christianity, he would have uttered that which, 
 if a truism, is at least a fact. 
 
 It is disappointing to find a distinguished student of 
 comparative religious lore so resigning himself to the 
 abandonment of a difficulty. It must, however, be allowed 
 that Western civilization is still very young in philosophic 
 experience. Doctrinal fetters have long cramped the mind, 
 and prevented its expansion in the ethical direction. 
 Moreover, our country has not long emerged from insular 
 barbarism, and four centuries ago was almost without culture 
 in foreign languages and foreign thought. The time is not 
 long past when, if a few bones of extinct animals had been 
 placed before a naturalist, and he were asked to reconstruct 
 the whole anatomy upon their basis, he would have smiled 
 with the superior wisdom of ignorance upon his inquirer's 
 absurd folly. Now he will not only build up the probable 
 anatomical form, but certainly separate from the bones placed 
 before him such as do not consist with the others but belong 
 to creatures of a lifferent type.
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 113 
 
 May we not hope, therefore, that as sympathetic study of 
 ancient philosophy progresses, there may be found to grow a 
 faculty of distinguishing between characteristic expressions of 
 thought, as is done with different varieties of bones ; and 
 that to body forth the thoughts of a distinctive thinker with 
 more or less fulness and certitude, we shall require but to 
 have before us authentic relics known to have proceeded from 
 him ? For the criticism of thought, time must be allowed, as 
 for other scientific studies.* 
 
 Professor Miiller somewhat fritters away the force of his 
 negative, and, while professing to maintain his stronghold, 
 abandons his separate forts, when he continues as follows in 
 respect to the Buddhist scriptures : 
 
 "Still, with regard to certain doctrines and facts, the 
 question, I think, ought to be asked again and again, 
 whether it may not be possible to advance a step further, 
 even with the conviction that we cannot arrive at results of 
 apodictic certainty? If it happens that on certain points 
 we find in different parts of the canon, not only doctrines 
 differing from each other, but plainly contradictory to each 
 other, it follows, surely, that only one of these can have 
 belonged to Buddha personally. In such a case, therefore, 
 I believe we have a right to choose, and I believe we shall be 
 justified in accepting that view as the original one, the one 
 peculiar to Buddha himself, which harmonizes least with the 
 later system of orthodox Buddhism." 
 
 There is a large amount of force in Professor M tiller's 
 
 * "Men of science . . . have to deal with extremely abstract and ideal conceptions. 
 By constant use and familiarity, these, and the relations between them, become 
 just as real and external as the ordinary objects of experience ; and the perception 
 of new relations among them is so rapid, the correspondence of the mind to 
 external circumstances so great, that a real scientific sense is developed, by which 
 things are perceived as immediately and truly as I see you now. 
 
 "Poets and painters and musicians also are so accustomed to put outside of 
 them the idea of beauty, that it becomes a real external existence, a thing which 
 they see with spiritual eyes, and then describe to you, but by no means create" 
 (W. K. Clifford, " Lectures and Essays"). 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 concluding suggestion, and we may note as curious the 
 fact that he has not carried on his parallelism of Buddhism 
 with Christianity in regard to the applicability of the very 
 searching test he puts forward. 
 
 Another Buddhistic student, Mr. D'Alwis, of Ceylon, 
 takes a very different view from that of Professor Max 
 Miiller ; he urges that " it is indeed possible, according to 
 hints given by Buddha himself, to separate his genuine 
 doctrines from the greater part, if not the whole, of what has 
 been long accepted as the logia. For example, after a little 
 investigation, we have found no difficulty in expunging the 
 whole of the fable which goes by the name of Gotama's 
 battle with Mara (Mara himself seems to partake of the 
 nature of the Evil One, Death and Cupid). There is no 
 more mystery in the very logia of Gotama than in works on 
 other religions. We find no authority for the predictions 
 regarding distinguished persons who lived in after times." 
 
 Mr. D'Alwis says further, " The Three Baskets do not 
 contain entirely the words of Gotama. None of them are 
 free from additions, and the discourses themselves show that 
 they are not without omissions. . . . The formal conclusion 
 of several of the Sutras, which is everywhere identically the 
 same, is essentially the language of the disciples. The Katha 
 Vatthupakarana, the third book of the Abhidhamma, was 
 added by Moggaliputta Tissou, with the avowed intention of 
 refuting the doctrines . in ' the apocryphal and heterodox 
 works' to which Max M tiller refers. . . . Then, again, we 
 have grave doubts as to the genuineness of some of the 
 books . . . the language of which, both as regards style 
 and grammar, is different from the undoubted logia of 
 Gotama. . . . Again, there is reason to believe that Ananda, 
 the beloved pupil of Gotama, imported much of his own ideas 
 into the Pari-nibbana Sutta." 
 
 The similarity between the account above given, and 
 the questions arising out of the growth of the Christian
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 115 
 
 scriptures, such as the dogmatic interpolations, the methods 
 of the anti-heretical fathers, the Johannine influences, etc., 
 may be noted by the way, and will be interesting to the 
 historical student. 
 
 The order of the Three Baskets, or orthodox Buddhist 
 scriptures, will throw some light upon the growth of a body 
 of religious doctrine. The three great divisions are Sermons, 
 Ethics, Metaphysics. Can we not, to speak broadly, follow 
 the course of the great prophet, and hear the sermon ? walk 
 with the disciples, and be treated to ethics, instead of to the 
 burning heart words of an inspired teacher? remove a little 
 further and come upon the disputatious .doctors with their 
 metaphysics ? 
 
 By what tests can we discover the prophet's own utterances 
 amongst imitations ? His mission is humanitarian ; his utter- 
 ances must manifest a human tenderness more markedly than 
 an ethical systematization. He will at times be exceedingly 
 simple from love of the little ones (intellectually speaking). 
 At times, from the difficulty of drawing down heavenly truths 
 into a lower and crasser sphere, he will resort to fable, and 
 will scatter caskets for the wise, parables of enshrined signifi- 
 cance, even paradoxes of startling form that live and are not 
 forgotten, by reason of the very audacity of their conception. 
 
 It may be well to relate here in brief the story of Gau- 
 tama's life. Legendary in part though it be, it no doubt 
 contains a valuable proportion of fact. 
 
 Sakya, or Siddharta, was the son of Raja Suddhodana, of 
 the clan of the Gautamas, who lived at Kapila, near Gorukpur, 
 on the confines of Nepaul and Oude. The date of his birth 
 is not known with absolute certainty, but 623 B.C. is most 
 generally accepted. His mother, Suddhodana's queen, was 
 named Maya. She died seven days after his birth, and the 
 child was brought up by a maternal aunt. The story respect- 
 ing his birth from the side of a virgin, which is said to have 
 reached Jerome and to have been repeated by Ratramnus,
 
 Ii6 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 would seem to be an afterthought of foolish followers ; the 
 legend is represented on very early temple sculptures. 
 
 A conjecture has been hazarded, from some peculiarities 
 of burial rites and other indications, that the Sakyas, who are 
 unknown in the records of India, were foreigners, and of a 
 Scythian royal family. A short time before the reputed birth 
 of the Muni, the Scythians had poured over Media, Judsea, and 
 Asia Minor ; and it is considered possible that one branch of 
 these invaders had penetrated at an earlier date into Northern 
 India. It has been conjectured that reference is made to 
 them in the description : " It is a mighty nation, it is an 
 ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, 
 neither understandest thou what they say. Their quiver is 
 as an open sepulchre, they are all warriors" (Jer. v. 15-17, 
 Tr., S. Sharpe). 
 
 There is a legend cited from Wassiljew's " Buddhismus," 
 by Schlagintweit in his " Buddhism in Tibet," to the effect that 
 the Sakya tribe had been involved in a disastrous war during 
 the life of the Buddha, and was nearly exterminated, its sur- 
 viving members being compelled to wander. It is suggested 
 that a son of the race may thus have been led to view exist- 
 ence as the source of pain and sorrow, rather than through the 
 circumstances described in the story presently to be related. 
 But it may be argued that the effect of a nomad life upon 
 the members of a warlike clan is likely to be in the direction 
 of increased hardihood and martial qualities, rather than in 
 the direction of deep analysis of the problems of existence ; 
 while the idleness and luxury of a court might by reaction 
 foster in a sensitive nature a tendency to a contemplative and 
 earnest life. 
 
 It is said, according to one legend, that on the day of 
 Sakya's birth were born also the daughter of a neighbouring 
 king (Yasodara, who, when the pair had reached their seven- 
 teenth year, became Sakya's wife), and Ananda, who after the 
 prince became accepted as a Buddha, accompanied him as
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 117 
 
 pupil and friend. If the story be true, the three friends, bound 
 on a mission from the worlds of spirits to "assume a human 
 form and to be born in the earth," must have started with a 
 wonderful sympathy of impulse ^to time their simultaneous 
 arrival here so exactly. 
 
 Sakya-muni, it is said, early distinguished himself by his 
 qualities both intellectual and personal. This statement is 
 probable enough, for an Englishman (the late R. C. Childers), 
 writing nearly twenty-five centuries after the time of the 
 immediate influence of the Buddha, says that " to those who 
 are familiar with the Pali sacred books, nothing is more 
 striking than the intense personality of Gautama." 
 
 The Scythians gave to their kings the title of " universal 
 ruler," and were probably known as the lion among nations, if 
 it is of them that the words were said, " The lion is come up 
 from his thicket, and the destroyer of nations has moved his 
 camp" (Jer. iv. 6). The legend of Gautama's birth is that 
 there then appeared the flower (Ficus glomerata) which is 
 fabled to manifest itself whenever one of the order of 
 universal monarchs is born ; and that he himself uttered with 
 his " lion voice," " My births are now at an end ; I wait the 
 unchangeable body. I have come and gone for the salvation 
 of all men, but now there is an end ; thenceforth, there shall 
 be no more birth." 
 
 The child grew up to learn all the wisdom of the age, and 
 the chivalric skill and grace of a prince of good family. 
 
 Indulged in every delight, the boy nevertheless grew weary 
 of the pomp and pleasures of his father's court. 
 
 It appears from the Laws of Manu that it was not unusual 
 in the earliest times of Brahmanism for such as sought a 
 superior life to turn hermits and to live secluded in the forest, 
 engaged in the study of the Vedas, in abstinence, meditation, 
 and prayer. The young prince's preceptors foretold that he 
 would become a recluse. He himself appears to have enter- 
 tained a larger idea than that of mere seclusion, and to have
 
 ng THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 awakened to the belief that he was to stand forth among his 
 fellow-men in the capacity of a saviour. 
 
 To the king it came as a great grief when his son, in the 
 flower of his youth and the splendid worldly promise of his 
 fine faculties of body and mind and his princely accomplish- 
 ments, began to show signs of the rare unworldliness that 
 marks the spiritual man. 
 
 The youth was no doubt for a long time going through 
 deep experiences, and preparing for the transition that was to 
 withdraw him once and for ever from the career of one of his 
 rank, to a life shared in its externals at least by the mendicant 
 and rlie anchorite. 
 
 He was married and had one child, a son named Rohula. 
 Everything external betokened the likelihood of the usual 
 settling down from the fleeting enthusiasms of youth to the 
 shorter views of average mature life. But the spirit moved him 
 too strenuously for this, and the evils of the world, which the 
 most of us accept as a matter of course, pressed upon the keen 
 sensibilities of the prophetic nature, and forced the youth's 
 heart and brain into some attempt at a solution of the problem 
 of mortal life. 
 
 The received account of his own personal final conversion 
 from the gay routine of a prince's life to the arduous career of 
 a seeker after truth, is in all probability a picturesque and 
 artistically composed romance founded on facts. 
 
 Mounted in his chariot, drawn by four white steeds, Prince 
 Sakya was on his way to his pleasure grounds, when his mind 
 became drawn into serious thought by the appearance of a 
 decrepit old man, grey-haired and toothless, tottering feebly 
 along by the aid of a staff. The reflections aroused by this 
 sight were none other than mournful, since man's subjection 
 to decay is evidenced no less in the palace than in the high- 
 way, though it may be more nakedly manifest in humble life, 
 where there are no artifices for hiding the ravages of time. 
 
 Four months later, Sakya's impressions were deepened by
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 119 
 
 encountering, while on a similar excursion to his pleasure 
 gardens, a poor squalid wretch smitten with the horrible 
 disease of leprosy. He returned again to the palace, only to 
 brood over the fact that man is not only subject to the natural 
 decay of old age, but to loathsome disease as well. 
 
 Four months more elapsed, and Sakya met on the same 
 route a corpse being conveyed along by its bearers. He 
 returned with the conviction so heightened that it became a 
 new and startling revelation that man, no matter his station, 
 is subject to decay, to disease, and to inevitable death. So 
 came to his mind the sense of the vanity of what is existent, 
 however well disguised by wealth and luxury and the con- 
 ventional habits of life and modes of regarding it. 
 
 Again a period of four months, and he met a calm and 
 cheerful recluse of a pleasant countenance, healthy, well and 
 simply clad in the robe worn by those dedicated to religion, 
 a man of few wants and no devouring anxieties or ambitions. 
 
 Here, in an air full of mortality and sorrow, in a state in 
 which pleasures are fleeting, and nothing truly permanent or 
 stable, was a being who seemed to have given up all, and to 
 live in a world from which care was removed. 
 
 He pondered the matter. There could be nothing per- 
 manent but truth, the absolute eternal law that regulated 
 existence. " Let me but discover that," he felt, " and I shall 
 know the way of lasting peace for mankind, and become their 
 deliverer." 
 
 He decided to go out from his life and never to return to 
 it, until he should have attained to the sight of this divine law 
 of life. So he quitted the palace and his native city, left 
 behind him his wife and child, and, in spite of the opposition 
 of his father, his wife, and his friends, exchanged the position 
 of a prince for that of a mendicant friar. Some would think 
 this an inhuman way of beginning wisdom ; but it was done 
 for humanity, and, if he had not made such a complete change 
 in his own life, the enervating influences of the palace (for it
 
 120 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 was not only father, wife, and child that he was leaving) might 
 have insensibly overpowered the efforts of the young man 
 whose course eventually affected the religious beliefs of half 
 the human race. 
 
 So Sakya went forth on his wanderings in search of 
 absolute truth. On his journey he cut off his long hair with 
 the tiara of royalty still attached to it, and assumed the three 
 simple garments of the friar, together with the begging pot, 
 razor, sewing needle, and bathing cloth, which comprised the 
 appointments of the homeless ascetic. 
 
 He was pursuing the orthodox plan of retirement and 
 purification. Far away from home he begged, in the con- 
 ventional manner, for alms and food, and retiring with the 
 broken scraps that had been cast into his begging pot, he 
 seated himself in a retired place, and, facing the east, ate 
 without loathing (for his purpose and passion were strong) his 
 first mendicant meal, so different from the repasts to which he 
 had been accustomed. 
 
 He resorted for instruction, as was natural, to the Brahman 
 priests, and hearkened to the exposition of their doctrines, but 
 found little satisfaction therein ; for to him, in his ardent state, 
 they probably seemed cold and abstract. 
 
 As there are traditional records of Buddhas antecedent to 
 Sakya, fragments of whose speech are incorporated with 
 orthodox Buddhist scriptures, we may suppose it possible that 
 the works of these earlier prophets were accessible to the new 
 seeker after wisdom, and that what he may have studied 
 meant more to him than it did to those of the learned class of 
 the Brahmans who were without his enthusiasm. 
 
 As he pursued his pilgrimage, he acquired from certain 
 Brahmans instruction in the faculty of silent abstraction and 
 contemplation of the Supreme Being, but could not obtain 
 from them the peace and certainty he sought that deep 
 interior tranquillity which, it is said, was at that time already 
 called Nirvana.
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 121 
 
 Finding that by contemplation he arrived no nearer to the 
 bodhi or Buddhahood of which he was in search, he devoted 
 himself to the vanquishment of Nature or concrete matter. 
 Although not regarding as an end the austerities that subdue 
 the force of the sense life, he spent six years in study and the 
 practice of the utmost extremes of starvation and penance. 
 At length, after dieting himself on a scanty allowance of 
 seeds, and so reducing his body to a skeleton, he concluded 
 that physical prostration, or any but a rational treatment of 
 the body, was attended with debility of the will and no eleva- 
 tion of the mind ; and, as the path of perfection evidently did 
 not lie that way, he rejected the system of mortification of the 
 flesh. 
 
 The years of privation had no doubt brought this fruit, 
 that they had tested his earnestness and enabled him to 
 vanquish any tendency to luxury or selfishness that his 
 nurture in a palace might have implanted in him. 
 
 Being satisfied that Buddhahood was not to be reached 
 through depravation of the body, but through enlightenment 
 of the mind, he resumed his ordinary pilgrimages as a friar, 
 and his simple but sufficient fare. On proper diet and a less 
 unnatural mode of life, he regained both his bodily strength 
 and mental vigour, but was deserted by the disciples who had 
 been attracted by the amazing extreme of austerity which he 
 had reached. 
 
 He now passed some time alone in his hermitage, or under 
 divers trees, thinking out the problems which had disturbed 
 him, and absorbed in deep meditation. Temptations assailed 
 him, but his principles enabled him to withstand them, even 
 the cowardly terrors of the Demon of Death. 
 
 Somehow his philosophy came to him, with the solid con- 
 viction for which he had longed. He was enabled to penetrate 
 into the first principles of things, as it seemed, and so to lay 
 the foundation of a practicable plan of life. 
 
 " Having attained this inward certainty of vision, he
 
 122 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 decided to teach the world his truth. He knew well what it 
 would bring him, what opposition, insult, neglect, and scorn. 
 But he thought of three classes of men : those who were 
 already on the way to the truth, and did not need him ; those 
 who were already fixed in error, and whom he could not help ; 
 and the poor doubters, uncertain of their way. It was to help 
 these last that the Buddha went forth to preach." 
 
 In himself he felt freed from the limitations of corporeal 
 existence, but for the sake of promoting the emancipation of 
 others, he did not pass away into his higher state, but directed 
 his steps to the Deer Park at Sarnath, where he unfolded his 
 principles, and first to those to whom he had been an offence 
 by his departure from his course of consummate austerity. 
 As they had followed him for his transcendent mortification 
 of the flesh, so it is to be presumed that they were now 
 attracted by the supremacy of his wisdom. By three months' 
 kindly instruction he succeeded in converting them. 
 
 According to one legend, the father of Sakya attempted to 
 allure his son from the life to which he had devoted himself, 
 by all imaginable promises : 
 
 " O son, I will bestow upon thee the elephant-drivers, the 
 charioteers, the horsemen, and arrayed footmen, with delight- 
 ful horses : I will also give thee the maidens adorned with all 
 sorts of ornaments ; raise up progeny by them, and thou shalt 
 become our sovereign. Virgins well versed in dancing and 
 singing, and perfected in the four accomplishments, shall 
 delight thee with their attractions. What dost thou in this 
 wilderness ? " 
 
 The reply has a ring of early Buddhism : " O sire, why 
 temptest thou me with perishing wealth, mortal beauty, and 
 youthful bloom ? O king, what is love, the pleasant look, 
 present delight, anxiety in pursuit of wealth, sons, and 
 daughters, and wives, to me who am released from the bonds ? 
 ... I know that Death will not forget me ; therefore of what 
 use are pleasure and riches ? . . . Return, return, O king ! I
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 123 
 
 have no desire for the kingdom" ("Incarnation of Booddhu," 
 from the Burman, transl. F. Carey. W. Ward, Hist. Lit. and 
 Rel. of the Hindoos : Serampore). 
 
 Another story of these early days is the following : 
 
 Five Brahmans followed the Prince Gautama when he left 
 his father's palace, into the forest of Uruwela. There they 
 remained with him six years, hoping to see him obtain per- 
 fection through his austerities ; but when, instead of increasing, 
 his austerities ceased, and Gautama regained his health and 
 beauty by eating sufficient food, they deserted him. When 
 Gautama had become Buddha, he searched for these five 
 Brahmans, and found them at Benares. To them he addressed 
 this, his first discourse : 
 
 " O priests ! these two extremes should be avoided an 
 attachment to sensual gratifications, which are degrading and 
 profitless ; and severe penances, which produce sorrow, and 
 are degrading and useless. 
 
 " O priests ! avoiding both these extremes, Buddha has 
 perceived a middle path for the attainment of mental vision, 
 true knowledge, subdued passions, and the perception of the 
 paths leading to the supreme good. 
 
 " O priests ! this middle path has eight divisions namely, 
 correct doctrines, correct perceptions of those doctrines, speak- 
 ing the truth, purity of conduct, a sinless occupation, perse- 
 verance in duty, holy meditation, and mental tranquillity" 
 (Gogerly, " The First Discourse delivered by Buddha "). 
 
 Buddha preached in many places, in forests and groves, in 
 palaces, by rivers, in gardens, in cities. He visited Benares, 
 and finally settled in the Jetavana at Sravasti, where a 
 monastery was built for him. The late R. C. Childers specifies 
 the provinces of Behar and Oude as being the " birthland of 
 Buddhism." The great teacher's followers rapidly increased ; 
 he taught, by conversation only and precept, to the end of his 
 life, which reached the span of eighty years. 
 
 Disciples had clustered round in great numbers in these
 
 124 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 latter years, and wherever the preacher went there followed 
 him a crowd. A general proclamation of the powerlessness 
 of the world of sense to satisfy the soul, a simple code of 
 deeply-founded morality, a continuous appeal to the law of 
 kindness to all living things, an entire disregard of caste, and 
 contempt for social distinctions as trivialities in the face of the 
 great danger of continuance in wearisome transmigrations and 
 ever unsatisfied unrest, these doctrines, proclaimed without 
 ceremony, were intelligible to all. Women were enrolled as 
 disciples, and no man was refused because he was a pariah of 
 the lowest [caste. " The Brahman is born of a woman, so is 
 the outcast. . . . My law is a law of grace for all. My doctrine 
 is like the sky. There is room for all without exception 
 men, women, boys, girls, poor and rich." This was a renova- 
 tion of a truth proclaimed long before : " The man who has 
 learned to recognize all beings in the supreme spirit, and the 
 supreme spirit in all beings, can henceforth look upon no 
 creature with contempt " (Isa-Upanishad). 
 
 It matters little whether the new teacher obtained hints of 
 his philosophy from Brahman or Jain. His true legacy was 
 the infusion of a new earnestness and reality into religion, so 
 that one of the epithets that has become attached to him, or 
 to any true follower of his, is, " He that hath life." 
 
 His doctrines all led in one direction conduct Knowing 
 how much happier we are ourselves in our earnest and 
 unselfish moments than when we are drifting down the heavy 
 stream of ennui, or seeking for a new pleasure with an over- 
 pleasured, enfeebled, and yet feverish taste, we need not 
 wonder at the influence gained by such a teacher. He had 
 earned the power to rouse his hearers out of apathy and 
 formality into vitality, or even into a wholesome fear, and 
 could succeed in stimulating them out of indulgence into the 
 conviction that in the abandonment of selfish pursuits lay the 
 certain way of peace, while, on the other hand, the poorest 
 person by becoming a disciple might win an individual con-
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 125 
 
 sciousness of power. Buddha did not expect anxieties to be 
 laid down at once ; he told his followers that progress was 
 gradual. What he succeeded in impressing upon them was, 
 that by adhering to the paths he pointed out they were on 
 the right road to emancipation. 
 
 It has been somewhat too glibly assumed that because the 
 Brahmanic conception of a God is represented as having been 
 ridiculed by Sakya, and because he nowhere ascribes individu- 
 ality to a Supreme Being, his system is an atheistic one. It 
 is true that there is an avoidance of allusion to a personal 
 deity, but it seems to be his reverence for his ideal of the 
 universality of law that compels him to exclude any notion 
 of personality. Personality, as the word is understood by the 
 generality, would in his view imply a defect in that supreme 
 ideal, a reduction to those lower elements wherein are limita- 
 tions and impermanency. 
 
 If we trace the history of the word person, it would appear 
 that we are more apt to employ it now to signify an integral 
 entity than is warranted by its original use. The Latin word 
 persona, from which we draw it, represents the very opposite 
 of such a sense ; it means a mask, a temporary manifestation, 
 a mere appearance, an external show. The corresponding 
 Greek word signifying person evidences the same dramatic 
 idea at its root. To personify an abstract conception is to 
 bring forward a thought into dialogue and dramatic form. 
 The word means essentially outward appearance rather than 
 inward verity. In Judaeo-Greek thought, a respecter of 
 persons is literally an accepter of faces one who penetrates 
 no deeper than the outward show. 
 
 To the Buddhist, in whose vision the supremely reverenced 
 Law was that alone which is ultimate and eternal, it would 
 have seemed profane to invest .it with any of the selfish 
 attributes of personality which by constant clash make up 
 the seething drama of terrestrial existence, and the conquest 
 of which is the way into heavenly emancipation.
 
 126 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Mr. D'Alwis says, in a Review of Miiller's " Dhamma- 
 pada : " 
 
 " The Reformer of Brahmanism . . . did not ignore a first 
 cause. He simply, perhaps qualifiedly, ignored Brahma's 
 claims to omnipotence, and indeed denied his creative power ; 
 for it did not enter into Gotama's abstruse philosophy to 
 assign a creative power to any being, when the great doctrine 
 of ' Life,' which he propounded, denied (see Attanagaluwansa, 
 p. 170) to everybody, including himself, the absolute power 
 of final deliverance, or of recalling, even for a moment, the 
 life which has once left this earthly tabernacle. Man is his 
 own deliverer. He is a free agent but an agent without a 
 power over any one but himself. 'Self is the lord of self; 
 who else could be the lord ? ' (Dh. v. 160)." 
 
 It has been poetically said of the reformer, in his relation 
 to the existing Brahmanism : " Gautama made a new song for 
 the old god." 
 
 A limited Pantheism if so paradoxical an expression be 
 allowable would perhaps best represent the Buddhist con- 
 ception of divine perfection. The soul released from its low 
 conditions enters into a life that is one with the unconditioned 
 Infinite ; while the soul that dwells still in the weary whirl of 
 selfish pursuit and the " orb of transmigration," is outside that 
 Pleroma, which is too vast for man's heart to embrace, too 
 inconceivable for the conditioned mind to define or explain. 
 
 The conception of a Love which by its very nature can, as 
 it were, humble itself to sympathize even with the back- 
 slidings, impatience, and feebly renewed efforts of a stumbling 
 soul, is the element lacking in the Buddhist theology, which, 
 so far only as that negation extends, may be regarded as 
 atheistic. 
 
 That the conception of divine love may subsist in a quasi- 
 pantheistic religion may be argued from the following motto 
 of the deity Vishnu : " As often as Right slumbers and Wrong 
 raises up its head, I create myself " (Bhagavadgita, iv. 7).
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 127 
 
 With a conception of deity so exceedingly abstract as that 
 of Buddha, it is little wonder that in minds tending to rigid 
 intellectuality the doctrine should run on into negation or 
 a kind of atheism. Similarly, as the idea of the eternal un- 
 changeable condition of life was, intellectually speaking, and 
 apart from its appeal to the feelings, arrived at mainly by the 
 remotion of all the attributes of every-day life, it is natural 
 that with many followers of Buddha the doctrine of Nirvana 
 should lead to a blank prospect of utter annihilation. With 
 another school, on the contrary, the idea became that of 
 " restoration to the true condition of being," which is akin to 
 the ancient doctrine of the Parsis, and in more or less sympathy 
 with an element which is to be found deep in the heart of 
 most religious faiths. 
 
 Buddha himself was probably content to leave something 
 of mystery in his exposition of that unexplored land of restful 
 truth. It was enough for him that he saw the way out of the 
 inherent falsities of corporeal existence to be the vanquish- 
 ment of the personal ambitions and fretful fevers of the un- 
 tamed mind. A teacher, whose eyes were opened, might well 
 have faith enough to leave undefined the undefinable, and yet 
 hold it to be truth that inconceivable existence, when actually 
 entered, might be positive, and not negative, life. But the 
 logicians of the metaphysical schools could not be content 
 with this. If the intellect by itself be raised to the throne, 
 it ousts faith, hope, and finally charity. Whatever is not 
 mathematically clear must be abandoned ; the worship of the 
 definite excludes the entertainment, even for a moment, of 
 unrealizable dreams and of the glimmer of imponderable stars. 
 What it is that the contemplative devotee reaches is a 
 difficult matter to solve. To the undeveloped soul that enters 
 meditative life when the practical were the easier and more 
 suitable school, the result may well be something apparently 
 not far removed from imbecility ; but what is it that the 
 dreamer of the joyful countenance has found ?
 
 128 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Warren Hastings, who can neither be regarded as an 
 unpractical man nor as without opportunities of observation, 
 thus wrote in 1784 upon the meditative faculty which is still 
 an attribute of the Indian ascetic : " To those who have never 
 been accustomed to this separation of the mind from the 
 notices of the senses, it may not be easy to conceive by what 
 means such a power is to be attained, since even the most 
 studious men of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to 
 restrain their attention but that it will wander to some object 
 of present sense or recollection ; and even the buzzing of 
 a fly will sometimes have the power to disturb it. But if 
 we are told that there have been men who were successively, 
 for ages past, in the daily habit of abstracted contemplation, 
 begun in the earliest period of youth, and continued in many 
 to the maturity of age, each adding some portion of knowledge 
 to the store accumulated by his predecessors, it is not assuming 
 too much to conclude that, as the mind ever gathers strength, 
 like the body, by exercise, so in such an exercise it may in 
 each have acquired the faculty to which they aspired, and 
 that their collective studies may have led them to the dis- 
 covery of new tracks and combinations of sentiment, totally 
 different from the doctrines with which the learned of other 
 nations are acquainted ; doctrines which, however speculative 
 and subtle, still, as they possess the advantage of being derived 
 from a source so free from every adventitious mixture, may 
 be equally founded in truth with the most simple of our own." 
 
 Perhaps a man well accustomed to worldly ways is nearer 
 to an appreciation of that Nirvana wherein the turmoil of 
 selfish ambition is imagined to be stilled, than the merely 
 intellectual critic can be. To the latter, Nirvana presents 
 itself as a condition that must be defined with scientific 
 exactitude ; to the former it appeals without argument with 
 the rude force of fact. Lord Bacon, who, like Buddha, 
 had seen something of the world, wrote that " the long and 
 solicitous dwelling in matter, experience and the uncertainty
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 129 
 
 of particulars . . . fixeth the mind to earth, or rather sinketh 
 it into an abyss of confusion and perturbation, at the same 
 time driving and keeping it aloof from the serenity and tran- 
 quillity of a much diviner state ; a state of abstract wisdom ! " 
 
 Many of the followers of Buddha \vho rushed in to define 
 what with greater knowledge of the undefinable he had left 
 indefinite, were doubtless holy friars from youth, and ignorant 
 of almost everything in the world but devotion and meta- 
 physics. They would naturally fail to appreciate his broad 
 and simple notion of Nirvana. Hence arises the paradox 
 that, to become a Buddhist after the primitive pattern, the 
 best way is not to study Buddhism but to be first a man of 
 the world. 
 
 And here we find the flaw of Buddhism as a system ; it 
 is like an exaggerated teetotalism. The young monk is with- 
 drawn from the world before he knows what it is, and is kept 
 by a rigid disciplinary system from the real teaching of causes 
 and effects, which, tardy though its results may be, no religious 
 leading strings can equal in efficacy : 
 
 " The mills of God grind slowly, 
 But they grind exceeding small." 
 
 In the language of Ruskin, the temple devotee grows up " by 
 protection innocent, instead of by practice virtuous." 
 
 The aim of Buddhism, or indeed of any monastic system, 
 is to remove the individual as far as possible from the natural 
 machinery of trial. 
 
 " Long is the night to him who is awake ; long is a mile 
 to him who is tired ; long is life [transmigratory life, the con- 
 stant revolution of birth and death] to the foolish who do 
 not know the true law," says Buddha, according to the Pali 
 Dhammapada ; but so long as that kind of existence is not 
 tedious to the individual immersed in it, the doctrine will take 
 no hold on him. Better surely that he should be left to pass 
 through the crucible of joys and pains than that he shoulc 1 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 become a monk before he knows what it is that he seeks to 
 escape. 
 
 " Few there are among men who arrive at the other shore ; 
 the other people here run up and down the shore." Here is a 
 recognition of the truth that many undeveloped souls prefer 
 that running up and down the shore, that common uncertain 
 life with its epochs of birth and death, to the most certain 
 passage across to Nirvana. 
 
 How strong is the tendency to nominalism, a state worse 
 than having no religion at all, seems to have been a familiar 
 thought with Buddha. 
 
 Here is his reply to a captious Brahman, in answer to the 
 question, " Who is the true disciple ? " " Not he who at stated 
 times begs his food ; not he who walks unrighteously, but 
 hopes to be considered a disciple, desiring to establish a 
 charapter (as a religious person), and that is all ; but he who 
 gives up every cause (karma) of guilt, and who lives con- 
 tinently and purely, who by wisdom is able to crush every 
 evil (inclination) this man is the true friar." "And who is 
 the truly enlightened ? " " Not he who is simply mute, whilst 
 the busy work of his mind is impure merely accommodating 
 himself to the outer rule, and that is all ; but he whose heart 
 is without preference (indifferent), whose inward life is pure 
 and spiritual (empty), perfectly unmoved and dead to this 
 or that (person or thing) this man is called an inwardly 
 enlightened man (Muni)." " And who is a man of Bodhi (an 
 Ariya, or ' elected one ') ? " " Not he who saves the life of all 
 things [this must mean by formality, as of the man who, on 
 principle, would not destroy vermin], but he who is filled with 
 universal benevolence, who has no malice in his heart he 
 is a man of Bodhi. And the man who observes the law 
 is not he who talks much, but one who keeps his body (him- 
 self) in subjection to the law (religion), although he be a plain, 
 untaught man, always guarding the way without any forget- 
 fulness this man is an observer of the law." This passage
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 131 
 
 is from Mr. Beal's version of the Chinese text of the Dham- 
 mapada. 
 
 If it is hard to attain this condition, so also, says Buddha, 
 is ordinary life hard : " To aim at supreme wisdom and to 
 give up sin is hard ; but to live in the world as a worldly man 
 is also hard. To dwell in a religious community on terms of 
 perfect equality as to worldly goods is difficult ; but difficult 
 beyond comparison is the possession of worldly goods. To 
 beg one's food as a mendicant is hard ; but what can a man 
 do who does not restrain himself? By perseverance the duty 
 becomes natural, and in the end there is no desire to have 
 it otherwise." 
 
 This recalls the precept which Bacon cites, "Optimum 
 elige, suave et facile illud faciet consuetudo " Fix upon that 
 which is best, custom will make it easy and delightful. But 
 even in this apparently perfect plan there is lurking danger, 
 as an old gnomic philosopher, Publius Syrus, once dis- 
 covered : " Bonarum rerum consuetudo pessima est " Cus- 
 tomedness of good things is the very worst of things. 
 
 The Buddhist friar who had left all evil behind might as 
 readily fall into spiritual dormancy in his good things as the 
 worldly man in his worldliness, and end in a mechanical 
 religion, removed from worldly activity not by being drawn 
 into higher and nobler activities, but by having exchanged 
 fever for nothing better than hibernation. 
 
 The Brahmans were careful not to make saints of unripe 
 souls, for they had a law which has more than one humorous 
 aspect, that, if a man at sixty years of age had not reached 
 wisdom, it was his duty to return to his home and marry a 
 wife. 
 
 There is a curious story of some Indian nuns which will 
 show that the devotee is not always the most devout. They 
 had sent to Buddha for an instructor, and he had responded 
 by despatching an old mendicant of poor faculties who knew 
 only one stanza of the law, but had learned its meaning
 
 132 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 thoroughly and could expound it. The party of nuns, learn- 
 ing who was to instruct them, began to laugh together, and 
 laid a plot that when the old man came they should all repeat 
 the verse backwards, and so confuse and put him to shame. 
 Their agreement was frustrated by some minor miracle, accord- 
 ing to the account as we have it ; but the story at least shows 
 that the nun of the time, even as seen by her own people, 
 cannot have been much better than her less sanctified sisters. 
 
 Buddha again and again hurls himself with his full force 
 against nominalism ; the following saying of his, which was 
 probably the corner-stone upon which the legend just quoted 
 was constructed, is one evidence out of many : " Although 
 a man can repeat a thousand stanzas, but understand not the 
 meaning of the lines he repeats, this is not equal to the repe- 
 tition of one sentence well understood, which is able when 
 heard to control thought. To repeat a thousand words with- 
 out understanding, what profit is there in this ? But to under- 
 stand one truth, and hearing it to act accordingly, this is to 
 find deliverance." 
 
 The following is Buddha's definition of the true Brahman, 
 which ancient term he adopted, with all its accumulated 
 prestige, as a designation of his truest followers : " It is not 
 by his clan, or his platted hair, that a man is called a 
 Brahman, but he who walks truthfully and righteously, he 
 is indeed rightly called a good man. What avails the platted 
 hair, O fool ! what good the garment of grass ? Within there 
 is no quittance of desire, then what advantage the outward 
 denial of self ? Put away lust, hatred, delusion, sloth, and all 
 its evil consequences, as the snake puts off his skin, this is to 
 be a Brahma-charin indeed." 
 
 This passage is from the Chinese version of the Dhamma- 
 pada, and it may be interesting to compare it with the render- 
 ing from the Pali, from which it differs very little. Max 
 Miiller Englishes as follows : " A man does not become a 
 Brahmana by his platted hair, by his family, or by both ; in
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 133 
 
 whom there is truth and righteousness, he is blessed, he is a 
 Brahmana. What is the use of platted hair, O fool ? What 
 of the raiment of goatskins ? Within thee there is ravening, 
 but the outside thou makest clean." We may add, also, the late 
 Professor Childers's translation of the last paragraph, since it 
 expresses a thought so familiar to Christendom : " Thou fool, 
 what dost thou with the matted hair, what dost thou with the 
 raiment of skin ? Thine inward parts are full of wickedness, 
 the outside thou makest clean." 
 
 Many a disappointment and rebuff must Sakya have 
 experienced from the incurable frivolity of the generality 
 before he could utter such words as follow : " Perceiving that 
 the ignorant herd can never attain true wisdom, the wise man 
 prefers in solitude to guard himself in virtuous conduct, not 
 associating with the foolish ; rejoicing in the practice of moral 
 duties, and pursuing such conduct as becomes this mode of 
 life, there is no need of a companion or associate in such prac- 
 tice solitary in virtue without sorrow, a man rejoices as a 
 wild elephant escaped from the herd." 
 
 A man of the present age, one who in certain moods may 
 almost be called a prophet, has expressed the same truth of 
 baffling as that uttered by Buddha and many other spiritual 
 men, in verses that rise to eloquence. They may help us to 
 appreciate the meaning of the words of the solitary young 
 Indian prince who quitted the life of a palace for that of a 
 vagrant preacher, and was content to rejoice in his isolation. 
 
 " Reformers fail, because they change the letter, 
 
 And not the spirit, of the world's design ; 
 Tyrant and slave create the scourge and fetter, 
 
 As is the worshipper will be the shrine. 
 The ideal fails, though perfect were the plan ; 
 World harmony springs through the perfect man. 
 
 " We burn out life in hot, impatient striving, 
 
 We dash ourselves upon the hostile spears ; 
 The bale tree, that our naked hands are riving, 
 Unites to crush us. Ere our manhood's years,
 
 134 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 We sow the rifled blossoms of the prime, 
 Then fruitlessly are gathered out of time. 
 
 " We seek to change souls all unripe for changes ; 
 
 We build upon a treacherous human soil 
 Of moral quicksand ; and the world avenges 
 
 Its crime upon us, while we vainly toil. 
 In the black coal-pit of the popular heart, 
 Rain falls, light kindles, but no flowers upstart. 
 
 " Know this ! For men of ignoble affection, 
 The social scheme that is were better far 
 
 Than the orbed sun's most exquisite perfection ; 
 Man needs not heaven till he revolves a star. 
 
 Why seek to win the mad world from its strife ? 
 
 Grow perfect in the sanity of life. 
 
 " Grow perfect ! bide thy time ! in thine own being 
 
 Solve, by an actual test, the problems vast 
 That vex mankind ; and, if the years are fleeing, 
 Wait patiently. Backward the shadow passed 
 Once at a prophet's word, and may for thee 
 Nay, will, if thou from self art perfect-free. 
 
 " Be chaste ! be true ! be wholly consecrated 
 
 To virgin right ! So shall thy soul unchain 
 The powers that for the perfect man have waited. 
 
 Though thought and instinct fail, bear every pain, 
 Till thy resolving elements are free 
 From the dread curse thy fathers cast on thee. 
 
 " New heavens of light shall dawn, the mind enskying ; 
 
 Age shall decease, and youth revive the frame : 
 And, from the desert, where men thought thee dying, 
 
 Thou shall return, flushed with celestial flame. 
 But even then, with gentlest motion, stir 
 The corpses of the world's dread sepulchre. 
 
 " Move as the air moves, rich with summer spice, 
 O'er fields of tropic bloom, and wheresoever 
 Thou meetest hearts self-locked in Arctic ice, 
 
 Know that they will repay thy kind endeavour 
 With many a shaft of malice, sent to kill 
 The gentle nations of thy innocent will. 
 
 " Seek only those who pine, in love's transfusion, 
 To pour themselves into the world's great life,
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 135 
 
 As sunshine through the summer's green seclusion ; 
 
 As music, when its haunting powers are rife, 
 Through all pure instruments and voices sweet, 
 Thou shalt attract them as the summer's heat 
 
 " Calls bloom into the woodlands ; but if none 
 
 Rejoice at thy sweet coming, lift not up 
 Thy voice ; infold thy beams, thou human sun ; 
 
 Pour not thy wine, O rapture-brimming cup. 
 God waits, and Nature waits, and so shouldst thou ; 
 Full oft thy silent presence is enow. 
 
 " What if thy tropic soul keep long in blossom ! 
 
 It feeds with spice the wild winds wandering by 
 God's breath, impulsing through thy sacred bosom, 
 
 Shall stir full many a heart with ecstasy. 
 Not powerless thou, unheard, unseen ; for so, 
 Still and invisible, the angels go." 
 
 This is the difficulty in the way of many ardent souls ; 
 themselves they can save, others they can only touch, and 
 that not always. Having the power in themselves of living 
 above the world, they cannot raise others to the same level 
 by making of them monks and nuns. A shallow soul is not 
 to be made a deep one, or a fool a sage, or frivolity turned 
 into sympathy, by a profession of conversion or by any form 
 of words, or even by service under the banner of the most 
 inspiring master. 
 
 In his isolation as a prophet, Buddha was not con- 
 temptuous of mankind, but very full of pity for all. The 
 assumptions of the Brahman caste were no doubt for him 
 lesson enough for pride. The following words are among 
 those attributed to him : " If any man, whether he be learned 
 or not, consider himself so great as to despise other men, he is 
 like a blind man holding a candle blind himself, he illumines 
 others." 
 
 Buddha in his earnestness went so much deeper than the 
 orthodox formalist that it need cause no surprise that his 
 doctrines had to be modified to suit minds less passionately 
 real. He was such as he describes the man who, in striving
 
 136 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 after true religion, forgets himself. In his revolt against 
 the luxurious ideal of a heaven realizing all earth's most 
 selfish gratifications without its pains, he taught that by the 
 enlightened man not only were the sorrows of earth to be 
 avoided, but the joys of heaven. We may remember another 
 and an even more burning protest against spiritual selfishness : 
 an affirmation that he that would save his soul must lose it ; 
 he must absolutely cast away himself. In the continuing 
 alertness of the highest faculties to be for ever used for the 
 good of others, lies the only way of arriving at a soul-quality 
 worth saving. 
 
 The incessant cry of early Buddhism upon the inherent 
 repulsiveness of the physical life tends to show how deep was 
 the impression made upon Sakya's nature, when developing 
 into manhood, by the disabilities of humanity. This ten- 
 dency develops into morbid excess when a preference is 
 shown for regarding ugly or revolting objects in corporeal life 
 because of the support they bring to his doctrine. If we 
 believe at all that the circumstances of life are adjusted to our 
 truest needs, we are bound to concede that the immitigable 
 facts of mortal life are lesson enough to those who are awake ; 
 while the constant repetition of depictions of the more hideous 
 ills to which man is heir would tend to a dull and deadened 
 habit of mind with regard to life in general, rather than 
 incite it toward higher ranges of spiritual vision, such as 
 might open themselves to the eyes of the patient seeker after 
 truth. 
 
 " What room for mirth, what room for laughter, remem- 
 bering the everlasting burning ? " (This expression must not 
 be regarded as anywise betokening our conventional notion 
 of hell ; it denotes rather that burning of selfish lusts and 
 eager ambitions which is regarded as the cause of the cease- 
 less round of transmigration.) " Surely this dark and 
 dreary world is not fit for one to seek security and rest in. 
 Behold this body in its fashioning ! What reliance can it
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 137 
 
 afford as a resting-place, filled with crowded thoughts, liable 
 to every disease ? Oh ! how is it men do not perceive its false 
 appearances ? When old, then its beauty fades away ; in 
 sickness, what paleness and leanness the skin wrinkled, the 
 flesh withered, death and life both conjoined. And when the 
 body dies, and the spirit flees, as when a royal personage 
 rejects a broken chariot, so do the flesh and bones lie scattered 
 and dispersed. What reliance, then, can one place on the 
 body?" 
 
 This passage, as rendered from the Pali, is even more 
 striking in its mournful and ghastly effect : " How is there 
 laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning ? 
 Why do you not seek a light, ye who are surrounded by 
 darkness ? Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with 
 wounds, joined together, sickly, full of many thoughts, which 
 has no strength, no hold ! This body is wasted, full of sick- 
 ness, and frail ; this heap of corruption breaks to pieces, the 
 life in it is death. These white bones, like gourds thrown 
 away in the autumn, what pleasure is there in looking on 
 them ? After a frame has been made of the bones, it is 
 covered with flesh and blood, and there dwell in it old age 
 and death, pride and deceit." 
 
 In a sunny country, life is apt to turn to a gaiety that may 
 become mere carelessness. Buddha, no doubt, knew the life 
 of the wealthy princes to be rarely more than a gay round of 
 thoughtless pleasure, taken often to the detriment of their 
 subjects. It was necessary to show how close were the sterner 
 facts of life to this unreasoning revel. We to whom the daily 
 newspaper brings the record of all the pains and calamities 
 that are befalling the world from one end of it to the other, 
 can scarcely need so much to be reminded of the disabilities 
 of mortal life and the impermanence of the condition of 
 humanity. But in the days when Buddha proclaimed his 
 gospel with frequent use of ghastly phrases, there were no 
 newspapers to bring close to men the story of the mishaps
 
 138 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 of their brethren ; and the meaning of the lesson of human 
 imperfection is perhaps slowly brought home to the dweller 
 in a crowded land where the individual is of small account, 
 and, unless he be the head of a village community, passes 
 away with but little disturbance to the ways of his fellows. 
 
 The kind of love which Buddha manifests is compassion 
 pity for the human race, which is blinded by the hood of self 
 upon its eyes, and struggling vainly in the clinging toils of the 
 immediate surroundings of its existence. Apart from this 
 pitiful affection, which extends to the minutest thing that has 
 life, Buddhism contains an abstract philosophy that conveys a 
 sense of chill, as if a skeleton absolutely perfect in the order of its 
 bones were our companion. We are told the only certain way 
 of escape ; it rests with us to pursue it. To reach it we must, 
 so far as our mortal appetites are concerned, attain the Jesuit 
 ideal, and become perinde ac cadaver. Thus and thus only 
 by the conquest of the human frailties and selfishness that 
 disturb us and keep us in the mesh of the lower elements, 
 may we enter into the sight of the mystic promised land of 
 Nirvana. 
 
 Man being in this world of sorrow and suffering, the 
 question arises, How got he thither? This question, with its 
 answer, is conspicuous in the Buddhist system. The belief on 
 this point we may find in a popular form in the Pratyasataka 
 (Century of Maxims) : 
 
 " Not from the king that rules the realm proceed our ills and woes, 
 Nor from the minister of state, our kinsmen, or our foes ! 
 Nor from the shining host of orbs that glitter in the sky, 
 Descend the ills that compass us, and shall do till we die, 
 And after. But the real source of all our woes on earth, 
 Is merit or demerit earned within a previous birth." 
 
 The following is a fair exposition of such an ontology : 
 " Uttering the sentiments of a Buddhist, a man might say, 
 I regard myself as a sentient being, now existing in the world 
 of men. But I have existed in a similar manner in many
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 139 
 
 myriads of previous births, and may have passed through all 
 possible states of being. I am now under the influence of all 
 I have ever done in all those ages. This is my KARMA, the 
 arbiter of my destiny. Until I attain NIRVANA I must still 
 continue to exist, but the states of being into which I shall 
 pass I cannot tell. The future is shrouded in darkness im- 
 penetrable." It may be questioned whether Sakya himself 
 would not have defined the future as consisting of light 
 impenetrable rather than darkness, but truly the idea of the 
 developed negationist is rather one of darkness. 
 
 " It is the mind alone (spirit)," according to the doctrine 
 of the Dhammapada (Chinese text), "that determines the 
 character of (life in) the three worlds. Just as the life has 
 been virtuous or the contrary, is the subsequent career of the 
 individual. Living in the dark, darkness will follow ; the 
 consequent birth is as the echo from the cavern ; immersed in 
 carnal desires, there cannot be anything but carnal appetite ; 
 all things result from previous conduct, as the traces follow 
 the elephant's step, or the shadow the substance." 
 
 The worthlessness of existence with the primitive Buddhist 
 is not a doctrine of mere pessimism ; what he means by 
 existence is not pure being, but such life as is due to that 
 quality in man or angel which Swedenborg called the pro- 
 prium. Even the Devas, who dwell in higher worlds than 
 man and in joys of long duration, eventually have to complain 
 of their imperfect character, and to find that they are still in 
 the net of transmigration. What it is to be absorbed into the 
 universal life without loss of our own identity is a condition 
 for us ineffable ; but it is in the cutting off of every root of 
 subjection to lower desire that, according to Buddha, the 
 entrance into that sublime state of purity is to be found. In 
 his creed, impurity is the cleaving to sensible objects ; purity 
 is the absence of such attachment. The substance of Buddha's 
 doctrine is this : " That the spirit or soul is the individual, and 
 the body is the habitation of the soul. As the spirit comes or
 
 140 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 goes, so the abode o'f the spirit (i.e. the body) is perfected or 
 destroyed. It may be objected to this that in such a theory 
 there is no room for real birth it is merely the soul coming 
 into a body ; and also, in the case of death, it is merely the 
 same soul going, and the abode falling to decay. But the 
 fact is, men generally know nothing about this soul they 
 only think of their bodies and so are led to desire life and 
 fear death ; and so their case is a pitiable one." Among the 
 enlightened this ignorance vanishes ; the knowledge of former 
 existences is one of the specific attributes of possession of the 
 supernatural condition. Among the Buddhist legends is one 
 of a father who, after the death of a young son who had 
 shown a marvellous grace and knowledge, was allowed, in 
 answer to his prayers, to be admitted to a sight of his child, 
 who was in a city of such heavenly spirits as sometimes dwell 
 among men. He addressed the child as his own, when the 
 boy upbraided him for using such a foolish term as father or 
 child, and refused to return with him to the earthly tabernacle. 
 The story has no doubt been made to illustrate the doctrine 
 of Buddha. 
 
 In superficial thought it may appear that such doctrines 
 end in indifference to all that is beautiful, alike with all that is 
 evil. It is true that in developed Buddhistic doctrine there is 
 an overhaste for emancipation, a lack of acknowledgment of 
 the fact that the beauty we find on the way of our pilgrimage 
 is a kind gift, so long as rightly used ; that there is no harm 
 in pleasure, so long as we do not become its slave ; that 
 transient attachments are better than self-withdrawal into 
 loveless ice. It is true that we find also in Buddhism a tend- 
 ency to a cold selfishness such as that of Lucretius; but it may 
 be presumed to arise from the pronounced intellectualism of 
 the Hindu character, rather than from any characteristic of 
 Buddha's teaching with which it is so manifestly inconsistent. 
 Though we find even in the Dhammapada such a sentence 
 as " Climbing the terraced heights of wisdom, the wise man
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 141 
 
 looks down upon the fools, serene he looks upon the toiling 
 crowd, as one that stands upon a mountain looks down upon 
 them that stand upon the plain," it does not follow that 
 it emanated from Buddha himself, while it seems probable 
 enough that it proceeded from some disciple who had become 
 elevated by the new wine of a great teacher's words. And 
 after all there is a truth in the crushing sarcasm of the Dham- 
 mapada : " If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, 
 he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the 
 taste of soup." Buddha's own indifference may have been 
 natural indifference, that is, disregard of what is physical and 
 transitory, but he cannot be accused of spiritual indifference. 
 The question suggests itself, whether, when the selfish passions 
 that actuate mortal life are stilled, not by lapse of faculties as 
 in old age, but through conquest of the lower by the higher, 
 there does not arise a spiritual passion which fills the being of 
 the truly earnest and enlightened individual with something 
 that is very far removed from indifference, and that gives out 
 a more potent influence than words. Buddha, who taught an 
 indifference that would repel most persons who live strongly 
 in the physical life, was a worker all his life for love. 
 
 A most striking passage in the Dhammapada we may 
 speculatively attribute to Sakya as representing his feelings 
 on the attainment of the gleam of vision for which he had so 
 long striven, the illumination that sent him forth to preach 
 with power for the remainder of his natural life. The passage 
 requires to be studied carefully, for its expressions are other- 
 wise apt to mislead. There is no antitheism in it, for there is 
 no reference either to a divine creator or to a demiurge ; the 
 great architect in the parable is that in us which builds up this 
 mortal life. It represents the cause of birth, discovered when 
 the soul awakens to consciousness of itself, the building being 
 the necessary expression of our state, the exact correspond- 
 ence to what we are and have been in selfish desires. We 
 give more than one translation of the text.
 
 142 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Mr. D'Alwis renders : " Through transmigrations of 
 numerous births have I run, not discovering (though) seeking 
 the house-builder ; birth again and again (is) sorrow. O 
 House-builder ! thou art (now) seen. Thou shalt not again 
 build a house (for me). All thy (rafters) ribs are broken (by 
 me). The apex of the house is destroyed. (My) mind is 
 inclined to nibbana. (It) has arrived at the extinction of 
 desire." 
 
 Mr. Childers begins the passage : " I have run through 
 the revolution of countless births seeking the architect of this 
 dwelling, and rinding him not ; grievous is repeated birth." 
 
 Professor Max Miiller has both these scholars against him 
 in rendering the tense as a future, which also makes the 
 passage unintelligible : 
 
 " Without ceasing shall I run through a course of many 
 births, looking for the maker of this tabernacle, and painful is 
 birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, 
 thou hast been seen ; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle 
 again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered ; 
 the mind, being sundered, has attained to the extinction of all 
 desires." 
 
 The following are variant versions : 
 
 " Through an endless circle of births 
 Have I sought to end, to destroy the poison, 
 Seeking the maker of the house ; 
 Again and again (have I known) the sorrow of birth. 
 I have found the maker of the house ; 
 No more shall (he) make a house for me ; 
 All his grief is pulverized, 
 And the poison is destroyed with the house. 
 (My) mind is freed from the sanskara ; 
 Craving is ended and (I) shall be no more." 
 (Jatakaniddnam [Tibetan version of the Niddnakathd], 153, 154). 
 
 " Maker of the house, I have sought until now to find thee 
 [I have gone again and again to draw thee forth, source of 
 existence], going through the revolution of countless exist-
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 143 
 
 ences, and subject to the pain of ever-recurring birth. 
 Maker of the house, having found thee out, and the great 
 beams of the house being destroyed, and all the rafters hewn 
 down, thou shalt not hereafter make a house (for me) " 
 (Udanavarga, iv. 31. 6-7). 
 
 " This udana, sung by all Buddhas," we have now at least 
 the opportunity of making of more value than a thousand 
 stanzas repeated without understanding, for the sense of the 
 original can surely now be reached. 
 
 Another of the striking passages of the Dhammapada, 
 designed, as it would seem, to stick to the mind like a bur 
 to the garment, which is the prerogative of parabolic or 
 paradoxical speech, is also worthy of special attention. 
 It must be premised that among deadly sins are reckoned 
 the acts of matricide, parricide, killing an Arhat or devout 
 Buddhist who has attained sanctification, shedding the blood 
 of a Buddha, causing divisions among the priesthood, follow- 
 ing strange teachers. 
 
 " The true Brahman goes scatheless though he have killed 
 father and mother, and two holy kings, and an eminent man 
 besides " (Childers). 
 
 " The Brahman goes placidly, having destroyed mother, 
 father, and two valiant kings ; and having also destroyed a 
 kingdom with all its subjects." " The Brahman goes placidly, 
 having destroyed mother, father, and two venerable kings ; 
 and having also destroyed that which has the haunts of tigers 
 for a fifth " (D'Alwis). 
 
 " A true Brahmana, though he has killed father and mother, 
 and two valiant kings ; though he has destroyed a kingdom 
 with all its subjects, is free from guilt. A true Brahmana, 
 though he has killed father and mother, and two holy kings, 
 and even a fifth man, is free from guilt " (Max Miiller). 
 
 The last-named translator takes it that these verses are 
 either meant to show that a truly holy man who by accident 
 commits all these crimes is guiltless, or that they refer to some
 
 144 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 particular event in Buddha's history. Mr. Childers gave it 
 as his opinion that the verse was " intended to express in a 
 forcible manner the Buddhist doctrine that the Arhat cannot 
 commit a serious sin." Mr. D'Alwis argued that, although, 
 according to Buddha, accidental homicide was sinless, acci- 
 dental homicide is not here referred to. Accordingly, he 
 advanced the theory that the depiction of the sanctified 
 Brahman as going placidly after a murder was meant in a 
 spirit of contradiction, and designed to startle and challenge 
 discussion, whereupon the destruction of all that was held 
 sacred by the Brahman society would be expounded as sym- 
 bolic of the destruction of the germs of existence which are 
 so fondly clung to. It may be open to question whether 
 any satire is intended, especially if, as has been alleged, 
 Buddha had adopted the revered word Brahman for his own 
 followers. Mr. D'Alwis, however, appears to have been right 
 in taking the various destructions as purely symbolic. Mr. 
 Beal has discovered in the Chinese Lankavatara Sutra the 
 following exposition of the doctrine, which ought to help our 
 occidental minds in the difficult work of appreciating the 
 oriental parabolism : 
 
 " Mahamati Bodhisatwa addressed Buddha and said : .' Ac- 
 cording to the assertion of the great teacher, if a male or 
 female disciple should commit either of the unpardonable sins, 
 he or she, nevertheless, shall not be cast into hell. World- 
 honoured One! how can this be, that such a disciple shall 
 escape, though guilty of such sins ? ' To whom Buddha 
 replied : ' Mahamati ! attend, and weigh my words well ! . . . 
 What are these five unpardonable sins of which you speak ? 
 They are these to slay father and mother, to wound a Rahat, 
 to offend (i.e. to place a stumblingblock in the way of) the 
 members of the Sangha (Church), to draw the blood from the 
 body of a Buddha. Mahamati ! say, then, how a man com- 
 mitting these sins can be guiltless ? In this way : is not Love 
 [selfish attachment ought it not rather to read, not to profane.
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 145 
 
 the name of Love ?] which covets pleasure more and more, 
 and so produces " birth," is not this the mother of all ? And is 
 not ignorance (avidyd} the father of all ? To destroy these 
 two, then, is to slay father and mother. And again, to cut off 
 and destroy those ten " kleshas" which, like the rat or the 
 secret poison, work invisibly, and to get rid of all the conse- 
 quences of these faults (i.e. to destroy all material associations), 
 this is to wound a Rahat. And so to cause offence and over- 
 throw a church or assembly, what is this but to separate 
 entirely the connection of the five skandhas?* ["five aggregates" 
 which is the same word as that used above for the " Church."] 
 And, again, to draw the blood of a Buddha, what is this but 
 to wound and get rid of the seven-fold body by the three 
 methods of escape ? [The seven-fold body, literally " the body 
 with seven kinds of knowledge ; " the three methods of escape 
 are the same as the three " yanas," or vehicles.f] . . . Thus it 
 is, Mahamati, the holy male or female disciple may slay 
 father and mother, wound a Rahat, overthrow the assembly, 
 draw the blood of a Buddha, and yet escape the punishment 
 of the lowest hell.' And in order to explain and enforce this 
 more fully, the World-honoured One added the following 
 stanzas : 
 
 " ' Lust, or carnal desire, this is the mother ; 
 " Ignorance," this is the father ; 
 The highest point of knowledge, this is Buddha ; 
 All the " Kleshas," these are the Rahats ; 
 The five Skandhas, these are the Priests ; 
 To commit the five unpardonable sins is to destroy these five, 
 And yet not suffer the pains of hell.' " 
 
 * The five skandhas are representative of the animal life. Probably originally 
 employed in a more general signification, they became defined as (l) organs of 
 sense and objects of sense ; (2) intelligence or consciousness of sensation ; (3) 
 pleasure, pain, or the absence of either ; (4) the knowledge or belief arising from 
 names and words (which distract the attention from qualities) ; (5) passions, as 
 hatred, fear, etc. 
 
 t Vehicles of escape from the possibility of birth, methods of salvation. The 
 commentary belongs probably to developed rather than to primitive Buddhism, 
 but it doubtless shows the true principle of interpretation of Buddha's paradox. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 This paradox with its interpretation has a special interest, 
 as reminding us of a more familiar paradox, that of a man's 
 hating his father and mother, and of his enemies being of his 
 own household, to wit, his own qualities. 
 
 In another part of the Dhammapada (Chinese) we find 
 a parallel but variant treatment of one of the symbols 
 interpreted above. Buddha says, " Learning first to cut 
 off the mother, and to follow the one true guide (minister), 
 dismissing all the subordinate place-holders. This is (the 
 conduct of) the truly enlightened man." Whereon the 
 commentary explains that Doubt is the Mother, the twelve 
 causes and effects (nidanas) the subordinates, wisdom the one 
 minister. 
 
 The following are parallel versions of the same original, 
 from the Northern Buddhist Canon : 
 
 " Having killed father and mother and two holy kings, 
 having conquered their kingdoms with its inhabitants, a man 
 will be pure." 
 
 "He who has killed father and mother and two pure 
 kings, and who has conquered their kingdoms with the 
 inhabitants, is without sin, is a Brahmana. 
 
 "He who has killed father and mother, and two pure 
 kings, and who has killed an irresistible tiger, is without sin, 
 is a Brahmana" (Udanavarga, xxix. 23 ; xxxiii. 70, 71). 
 
 Mr. Rockhill gives the note of the commentator Pradjna- 
 varman, of the ninth century, A.D., as follows : 
 
 " ' Tiger ' implies a being whose mind is solely bent on 
 evil. As the tiger in its natural ferocity devours unhesita- 
 tingly flesh and blood, so likewise he whose mind is bent on 
 evil or spitefulness devours all the roots of virtue [that appear 
 in others ?]. The five [persons killed] imply the five mental 
 darknesses." 
 
 The "five mental darknesses" are represented as "lust, 
 ignorance, pride, shamelessness, hardness of heart ; " or, " lust, 
 anger, ignorance, self-confidence and pride." These recall the
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 147 
 
 " five hindrances " that exist outside of and beyond the " five 
 categories of sense," viz. " covetousness, anger, sloth, restless- 
 ness, unbelief." The interpretation of the other symbols is 
 to the effect that " king " means one of the skandhas ; and 
 " Raja," or " King," the region of passions, of form, and so 
 forth. " Kingdom " signifies " the six senses ; " " its inhabi- 
 tants," " feeling and perception," the foremost of the six 
 internal senses. In the Arya Kdtyayana, "the mother" is 
 " desire ; " " the father " " corruption, existence, and deeds 
 done ; " the " king " " attachment and the other perceptions 
 of the mind, the six senses which are lord of the abode ; " 
 "kingdom" "the region of sin," and "the inhabitants" "what 
 accompanies sin." 
 
 It will be observed that, as in the case of the Christian 
 Scriptures, the commentary is developed so abundantly as 
 almost to smother the text. 
 
 One of the most interesting of the illustrative metaphors 
 of Buddha is that of the wound : " He who has no wound on 
 his hand may touch poison with his hand ; poison does not 
 affect one who has no wound ; nor is there evil for one who 
 does not commit evil." Max Miiller says, " This verse can 
 only mean that no one suffers evil but he who has committed 
 evil or sin ; an idea the very opposite of that pronounced in 
 Luke xiii. 1-5." There appears to be a complete misappre- 
 hension here ; the text seems to mean that a man free from 
 any tendency to a particular evil cannot be contaminated by 
 it. Evil is altogether relative ; death itself is not an evil 
 except when viewed from a physical standpoint only ; there 
 may be those who are glad to have their step. The man who 
 has no wound on his hand represents, with regard to evil con- 
 sequent on yielding to temptation, a person above the plane 
 on which a particular temptation has force. Two men, for 
 instance, shall pass by some vicious allurement, the one is 
 conscious of struggle, of a drawing ; the other is perfectly un- 
 disturbed in the spiritual state to which (after who knows how
 
 148 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 many warring years or lives ?) he has attained. He has now, 
 in this particular respect, no wound on his hand. 
 
 Two parables that seem to belong to primitive Buddhism, 
 illustrate the positive ideal of Nirvana: they are known as 
 the comparisons of the Guest and the Dust : 
 
 " As a traveller takes up his quarters at an inn, and, having 
 rested and refreshed himself, sets out again on his weary 
 journey, and has no leisure to rest or remain fixed (so is man 
 in his natural condition) ; whereas, the true master of the 
 house moves not from the place of his abode. So, that which 
 is impermanent and unfixed is like the traveller, but that 
 which is fixed we call the Master of the House ; this is the 
 parable of the Guest." 
 
 "As in the case of a clear sky, when the bright sun is 
 shining, a ray of light perchance enters through a crack in a 
 door, and, spreading its brightness in the space through which 
 it passes, exhibits all the particles of dust in commotion and 
 unrest ; but, as to the space in which the particles move, its 
 nature is rest ; so also is the condition of man in the con- 
 dition of unrest and in that of permanency (Nirvana )." 
 
 The parable of the water, from the Sutra of the Forty-two 
 Sections, forms a pair with the last : " A man who cherishes 
 lust and desire, and does not aim after supreme knowledge, 
 is like a vase of dirty water, in which all sorts of beautiful 
 objects are placed. The water being shaken up, men can see 
 nothing of the objects therein placed ; so lust and desire, 
 causing confusion and disorder in the heart, are like the mud 
 in the water ; they prevent our seeing the beauty of supreme 
 reason (Religion). But . . . the mud in the water being 
 removed, all is clear and pure remove the pollution, and 
 immediately of itself comes forth the substantial form." 
 
 Again, the kingdom of heaven, and the obscuring influences 
 of earth (to turn to more familiar imagery) are likened to 
 water boiling in a pot upon a fire, into which if a man look 
 he will see no image of himself. " So the three poisons
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 149 
 
 [covetousness, anger, delusion], which range within the heart, 
 and the five obscurities [envy, passion, sloth, vacillation, 
 unbelief], which embrace it, effectually prevent one attaining 
 (seeing) supreme reason. But once get rid of the pollution 
 of the wicked heart, and then we perceive the spiritual portion 
 of ourselves which we have had from the first, although in- 
 volved in the net of life and death gladly then we mount 
 to the paradise (lands) of all the Buddhas, where reason and 
 virtue continually abide." This at least is unspoiled Bud- 
 dhism, and would seem to belong to the man whose disciples, 
 to judge by the early sculptures, had no formal priestly ton- 
 sure, and who preached that no outward act or conformity 
 was of any avail, but a new spirit only. 
 
 Other stories show the presence of the same man : " There 
 was a Shaman who nightly recited the Scriptures with plain- 
 tive and husky voice, desiring to do penance for some thought 
 of returning to sin. Buddha in a gentle voice addressed him 
 thus : ' Tell me, my son, when you were living in the world, 
 what did you practise yourself in learning ? ' He replied, ' I 
 was always playing on my lute.' Buddha said, ' And if 
 the strings of your instrument were lax, what then ? ' He 
 replied, ' They would not sound." ' And if they were too 
 tight, what then ? ' He replied, ' The sound would be too 
 sharp.' ' But if they were tuned to a just medium, what 
 then ? ' He replied, ' All the sounds would then be harmo- 
 nious and agreeable.' Buddha addressed the Shaman : ' The 
 way of religion (learning) is ever so. Keep the mind well- 
 adjusted, and you will be able to acquire reason.' " 
 
 Another caution, too, Buddha may have learned from his 
 discovery that even the extravagance of asceticism formed no 
 royal road to peace, " raw haste " being ever " half-sister to 
 delay : " 
 
 "The practice of Religion is just like the process followed 
 in an iron foundry : the metal being melted, is gradually 
 separated from the dross, and drops down ; so that the vessel
 
 ISO THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 made from the metal must needs be good. The way of 
 wisdom is likewise a gradual process ; consisting in the sepa- 
 ration of all heart pollution, and so by perseverance reason 
 is accomplished. Any other cause is but weariness of the 
 flesh, and this results in mental sorrow, and this leads to 
 apostasy, and this leads to hell (Asura)." Very simple 
 indeed is the doctrine of one of the most primitive of the 
 Gathas : 
 
 " Scrupulously avoiding all wicked actions ; 
 Reverently performing all virtuous ones ; 
 Purifying this intention from all selfish ends ; 
 This is the doctrine of all the Buddhas." 
 
 The following, from the Vasettha Sutta, would seem to 
 be a mixture of Buddha's teachings with the ordinary asceti- 
 cism of Hindu religion. Many of the passages are almost 
 identical with verses of the " Dhammapada : " 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, having severed all 
 fetters, does not tremble, and has avoided allurements, and 
 remains unshackled. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who has destroyed enmity, 
 attachment, scepticism with its concomitants, and has de- 
 molished ignorance and attained Buddhahood. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, without anger, endures 
 reproach, torture, and bonds ; and has for his army his own 
 power of endurance. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who is not wrathful, (but) 
 dutiful, virtuous, unenslaved (by lust), subdued, having attained 
 his last body (birth). 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, like water on the lotus- 
 leaf, or a mustard seed on the point of a needle, does not 
 cling to sensuality. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, whose knowledge is pro- 
 found, who is wise, knows the right and the wrong paths, and 
 has attained the highest good. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who mixes not with house-
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 151 
 
 holders, or with the houseless, nor with both, who is freed 
 from attachment, and is contented with little. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, having laid down the 
 club (of violence) in respect of movable and immovable 
 beings, does not kill or cause them to be slaughtered. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who amongst the wrathful 
 is not angry, who amongst the contentious is peaceful, who 
 amongst those given to attachment is void of attachment. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, from whom lust, anger, 
 pride, and envy have dropped off like a mustard seed from 
 the point of a needle. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who utters true and instruc- 
 tive speech, freed from harshness and offence to any. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who in the world takes 
 nothing that is not given him, be it long or short, small or 
 large, good or bad. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, to whom there is no desire 
 for this world or the next, who is desireless and unshackled. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who has no desire, who by 
 his knowledge is freed from doubt, who has attained nibbana. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who in this world has thrown 
 off his attachment to merit and demerit both, is freed from 
 grief and sin and is pure. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who has gone past this 
 difficult road, the impassable and deceptive circle of exist- 
 ence ; who has passed through it to the other shore ; who is 
 meditative, free from desire and doubt, and released from 
 attachments. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who abandoning sensual 
 pleasures in this world, becomes a houseless ascetic, and in 
 whom the desire for a sensual existence is extinct. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, abandoning covetous- 
 ness in this world, becomes a houseless ascetic, and in whom 
 the desire for existence is extinct. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who, having cast off liking
 
 1 5 2 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 and disliking, is passionless, freed from the germs (of exist- 
 ence), and is a hero who has overcome all the elements (of 
 existence). 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, whose progress neither gods, 
 demigods, nor men know, whose passions are extinct and who 
 is a saint. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who has nothing, whether in 
 the past, future, or the present, who has nothing (whatever) 
 and is desireless. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who is fearless, eminent, 
 heroic, a great sage, a conqueror, freed from attachments, one 
 who has bathed (in the waters of wisdom) and is a Buddha. 
 
 " I call him alone a Brahman, who knows his former abode, 
 who sees both Heaven and Hell, and has reached the extinc- 
 tion of births. 
 
 " What is called ' name ' or ' tribe ' in the world arises 
 from usage only. It is adopted here and there by common 
 consent. 
 
 "It comes from long and uninterrupted usage, and from 
 the false belief of the ignorant. (Hence) the ignorant assert, 
 ' that a Brahman is such from birth.' 
 
 " One is not a Brahman, nor a non-Brahman by birth ; by 
 his conduct (alone) is he a Brahman, and by his conduct 
 (alone) he is a non-Brahman. 
 
 " By his conduct he is a husbandman ; by his conduct he 
 is an artisan ; by his conduct he is a merchant ; by his conduct 
 he is a servant. 
 
 " By his conduct he is a thief ; by his conduct a warrior ; 
 by his conduct a sacrificer ; by his conduct a king. 
 
 " Thus the wise who see the cause of things and under- 
 stand the results of action, know this (kamma) matter as it 
 really is. 
 
 " The world exists by cause ; all things exist by cause ; 
 and beings are bound by cause (even) as the rolling cart by 
 the pin of an axletree.
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 153 
 
 " One is a Brahman from penance, chastity, observance of 
 the (moral) precepts, and the subjugation of the passions. 
 Such is the best kind of Brahmanism. 
 
 " Know, Vdsettha, that to those who are wise, he who is 
 accomplished in the threefold knowledge, is patient and has 
 extinguished future birth, is even a Brahma and Indra. 
 
 "Therefore (a man) becoming possessed of presence of 
 mind at all times, should abandon the longing for objects 
 of sense. Having forsaken them, he should cross the stream, 
 even as one baling out a ship is in the habit of reaching the 
 furthest shore." 
 
 What has often been described as Christian meekness was 
 taught even before Buddha, in the injunctions to the 
 Brahmans : 
 
 " Let not a man be querulous even in pain. . . . Let him 
 bear a reproachful speech with patience ; let him speak 
 reproachfully to no man ; let him not, on account of this frail 
 and feverish body, engage in hostility with any one living. 
 With an angry man let him not in his turn be angry ; abused, 
 let him speak mildly" (Inst. Menu., 161, 47, 48). 
 
 " If he who strikes him lets fall the stick which he is 
 using, let him pick it up, and render it to him without a 
 murmur" (Menu. cit. Jaccolliot, 301). 
 
 The idea of returning good for evil is conveyed with great 
 beauty in the Aryan couplet upon the duty of a good man, 
 even at the moment of his destruction, of " not only forgiving, 
 but even desiring to benefit his destroyer, as the sandal-tree 
 shedding perfumes on the axe, at the moment of its over- 
 throw." 
 
 The following passage may be described as Buddhist with 
 a gospel ring about it : 
 
 " A man buries a treasure in a deep pit, reasoning thus 
 within himself : ' When occasion arises, this treasure will be 
 of use to me, if I am accused by the king, or plundered 
 by robbers, or for release from debt, or in famine, or in
 
 154 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 misfortune.' Such are the reasons for which men conceal 
 what in this world is called treasure. 
 
 " Meanwhile all this treasure, lying day after day con- 
 cealed in a deep pit, profits him nothing. Either the treasure 
 vanishes from its resting-place, or its owner's sense becomes 
 distracted with care, or Nagas remove it, or malignant spirits 
 convey it away, or his enemies or his kinsmen dig it up in his 
 absence. The treasure is gone when the merit that produced 
 it is exhausted. 
 
 "There is a treasure that man or woman may possess, 
 a treasure laid up in the heart, a treasure of charity, piety, 
 temperance, soberness. It is found in the sacred shrine, 
 in the priestly assembly, in the individual man, in the 
 stranger and sojourner, in the father, the mother, the elder 
 brother. 
 
 " A treasure secure, impregnable, that cannot pass away ; 
 when a man leaves the fleeting riches of this world, this he 
 takes with him after death. 
 
 " A treasure unshared with others, a treasure that no thief 
 can steal. Let the wise man practise virtue ; this is a treasure 
 that follows him after death " (Khuddaka Patha, 8. Trans- 
 lated from the Pali by R. C. Childers). 
 
 From the same treatise comes the following fine passage, 
 entitled " Good Will to all : " 
 
 " This is what should be done by him who is wise in seek- 
 ing his own good, who has gained a knowledge of the tranquil 
 lot of Nirvana. Let him be diligent, upright, and conscien- 
 tious ; meek, gentle, not vainglorious. 
 
 " Contented and cheerful, not oppressed with the cares of 
 this world, not burdened with riches. Tranquil, discreet, not 
 arrogant, not greedy for gifts. 
 
 " Let him not do any mean action for which others who 
 are wise might reprove him. Let all creatures be happy 
 and prosperous, let them be of joyful mind. 
 
 " All beings that have life, be they feeble or strong, be
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 155 
 
 they tall or of a middle stature or short, be they minute or 
 vast : 
 
 " Seen or unseen, dwelling afar or near at hand, born or 
 seeking birth, let all creatures be joyful. 
 
 " Let no man in any place deceive another, nor let him be 
 harsh towards any one ; let him not out of anger or resent- 
 ment wish ill to his neighbour. 
 
 " As a mother so long as she lives watches over her .child, 
 her only child, so among all beings let boundless good will 
 prevail. 
 
 " Let good will without measure, impartial, unmixed with 
 enmity, prevail throughout the world, above, below, around. 
 
 " If a man be of this mind so long as he be awake, 
 whether standing or walking, or sitting or lying, then is come 
 to pass the saying, ' This place is the abode of holiness.' 
 
 " He who has not embraced false doctrine, the pious man 
 endowed with a knowledge of Nirvana, if he conquer the 
 love of pleasure he shall never again be born in the womb." 
 
 Little need be said in connection with Buddha upon the 
 supernatural. He professed to no more miracles than were 
 believed to be within the power of any trained ascetic to 
 accomplish. He claimed to no more than was open to his 
 disciples. There was a regular plan of contemplation by 
 pursuing which the patient disciple might at length perceive 
 his physical body to be but " as a cloud or a shadow," and 
 thus gradually attain to the different attributes of spiritual 
 perfection. Abstract meditation is the first state, that of 
 exercising the mind without disturbance from bodily influences, 
 and thereby liberating the soul. 
 
 Among his mysterious gifts was reckoned the power of 
 preparing and directing his wraith, so as to appear in another 
 place than that where his body was. The expression invari- 
 ably used is " to send off his appearance." The same power 
 has been claimed by others. 
 
 The trividyd, or triple knowledge, claimed to be acquired
 
 156 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 by the Buddhist saint ought we to say attainable by 
 ourselves, also, provided the necessary discipline be under- 
 taken ? consists of the faculty of memory of the conditions 
 of preceding incarnations ; the perception of the thoughts 
 of others ; and supernatural knowledge. 
 
 The first step in this disciplinary direction, one not yet 
 wearied of " the orb of transmigration " would probably find 
 sufficiently difficult to prevent his pursuing the way of 
 emancipation any further : 
 
 " Cut off the five (senses), leave the five, rise above the 
 five. A friar who has escaped from the five fetters, he is 
 called 'saved from the flood ' " (Dh. tr. Max Miiller, 370). 
 
 The abandonment of the five " desires of the flesh " must 
 leave life, naturally speaking, somewhat naked and com- 
 fortless, for the five desires are of " beauty, sound, odours, 
 taste, and touch." 
 
 In such recondite subjects it may seem presumptuous for 
 one with no claims to sanctity to offer criticism, as the whole 
 value of the Buddhist gospel depends upon the validity, so 
 difficult for an outsider to substantiate, of the hypothesis, that 
 once the terrestrial attachments are mastered and expunged, 
 the mysterious art of liberating the spiritual nature is gained, 
 and a new great world of Nirvana opens on the view : 
 
 "When you have understood the destruction of all that 
 was made, you will understand that which was not made " 
 (Dh. tr. M. M., 383). 
 
 But, after an apology for ignorance of transcendental 
 facts, one may timidly wonder why the soul cannot come to 
 a decision whether to pursue or extinguish a transmigratory 
 career, during one of the periods of disembodiment. Surely, 
 during such a pause and quietude, upon any spiritual 
 hypothesis, there should be clearness of perception to decide 
 upon the next step of life. At least, it seems reasonable 
 to suppose that the sight should be clearer then than when 
 corporeal existence has again closed in upon the soul.
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 157 
 
 According to Tibetan ideas, " the intermediate state 
 between death and rebirth," though of varying duration, does 
 not exceed forty days. Of this breathless period after the 
 five senses are cut off, we shall be reminded when we come 
 to analyze one of the Christian parables that of the Ten 
 Virgins. 
 
 That Nirvana was not regarded as a negative repose due 
 to annihilation after death may be seen from the references to 
 its acquisition while still in life : 
 
 " He who is a Muni and a Brahmana, and who is con- 
 sequently wise, is delivered from the material (rupa) and the 
 immaterial (arupa), and from all kinds of suffering. 
 
 "He who has reached the end and is without fear, is 
 without pride and without sin ; having left behind the pains 
 of existence, he has a body for the last time. 
 
 " This is the chief [beatitude] of those who have reached 
 the end, perfect and unsurpassable peace, the destruction 
 of all characteristics, the perfection of perfect purity, the 
 annihilation of death. 
 
 " The Muni having cast off the sanskara of existence [and 
 also] like and unlike, by delighting in perfect composure he 
 has broken the shell of the egg of existence and goes out [of 
 the world] " (Udanavarga, tr. from Tibetan by W. W. Rockhill, 
 ch. xxvi., Nirvana, 29-32). 
 
 The " destruction of all characteristics " is rather a blow 
 to the idea of identity, unless we take it to mean the 
 vanquishment of earthly weaknesses and of national, local, 
 or hereditary traits and prejudices. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the Nirvana which " is neither 
 in earth, or in water, fire, or wind," with that " region without 
 form " respecting which the orthodox of the day interrogated 
 the Hebrew prophet, and were told, " The kingdom of God 
 cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, Lo, 
 here ! or, There ! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you " 
 (Luke xvii. 20, 21).
 
 158 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 The nirvana of " final emancipation " and " life without 
 end " is even closer to the Christian ideal : " The imper- 
 manency of the created, the visible, the made, the produced, 
 the compound ; the great torment of subjection to old age, 
 death, and ignorance ; what proceeds from the cause of 
 eating : (all this) is destroyed, and there is found no delight 
 in it ; this is the essential feature of final emancipation. Then 
 there will be no doubts and scruples ; all sources of suffering 
 [the five skandhas] will be stopped, and one will have 
 the happiness of the peace of the sanskara" (Udanavarga, 
 xxvi. 24). 
 
 Harmonization of the respiration was considered necessary 
 for truly meditative thought. The directions for this, and 
 also with regard to food, sleep, and posture, are given in great 
 detail. The harmony of the heart, and of the mental faculties, 
 have also to be strictly attended to, to avoid anxiety, levity, 
 excitement, or hysteria, when it is desired to secure the 
 abstraction called "samadhi." Broken and uneven respira- 
 tion will not allow of the passage of equable thought without 
 interruption. The mind as an entity in Buddhistic thought 
 probably corresponds to what we understand by soul or 
 spirit. " The faculties have the mind for their leader ; they 
 hold it as their chief ; they are made up of the very mind," 
 is the sentence that begins the Dhammapada. Again we 
 find:- 
 
 " As a fletcher makes straight his arrow, a wise man makes 
 straight his trembling and unsteady thought, which is diffi- 
 cult to keep, difficult to turn. 
 
 " As a fish taken from his watery home and thrown on the 
 dry ground, our thought trembles all over in order to escape 
 the dominion of Mara (the tempter). 
 
 " It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to hold in 
 and flighty, rushing wherever it listeth ; a tamed mind brings 
 happiness. 
 
 " Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 159 
 
 difficult to perceive, very artful, and they rush wherever they 
 list : thoughts well guarded bring happiness. 
 
 " Those who bridle their mind which travels far, moves 
 about alone, is without a body, and hides in the chamber (of 
 the heart) will be free from the bonds of Mara (the 
 tempter)." 
 
 Again, " Well-makers lead the water (wherever they like) ; 
 fletchers the arrow ; carpenters a log of wood ; wise people 
 fashion themselves." 
 
 The other mystic attributes or powers, besides the medita- 
 tive faculty, are those of assuming any form at will, of clair- 
 audience and clairvoyance, of thought-reading, of the extinc- 
 tion of desires, and of the knowledge of what took place in 
 previous states of existence. The magical power enabling 
 saintly sages to walk through the air is gravely accepted in 
 the orthodox scriptures of Buddhism ; and the same power 
 is said to be found at the present day. But Buddha asserted 
 that no man was a saint by outward acts. " I command my 
 disciples," he said, " not to work miracles ; but to hide their 
 good deeds and to show their sins." 
 
 Of Buddha himself a pretty legend is told, that if he 
 passed anybody in pain, the pain, however intense, ceased 
 instantly ; and when his foot touched the ground a lotus 
 sprang up at every step." This belongs evidently to the 
 period when a personal worship of Buddha had begun. 
 
 The way in which this worship accepts equally the man 
 and his doctrine as its object is very curious, and throws 
 some light upon the question how far a man may be 
 reverenced as representing the ideal which is his legacy to 
 humanity. Buddha, the law or doctrine, and the congregation 
 of the Faithful, constitute the Triple Gem of the Buddhists. 
 The following is from the Kusa Jataka : 
 
 " Him who, all lusts uprooting through long-continued strife, 
 Became the BUDDHA, and proclaimed the bliss of heavenly life! 
 The true and precious DOCTRINE which through the world was shown 
 By him, shall I unceasingly with adoration own."
 
 160 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Buddhism is the most philosophical of religions, as the 
 teaching of Jesus is the most full of love. But even Buddha 
 felt that the human mind might easily lose itself in vagueness 
 of thoughts too large to grasp ; while, in taking conduct rather 
 than thought as the true object to be attained, there was no 
 such danger of aberration. So he left a caution (which his 
 followers have not followed) against overmuch speculation. 
 According to Mr. Childers, who made the Pali literature 
 his special study, " Buddhism has four great problems ; they 
 are the First Cause (Karma), the Supernatural, the Origin of 
 Matter, and the Attributes of a Buddha. These four subjects 
 Gautama declared to be unthinkable, and he forbade his 
 priests to dwell upon them, lest they should lose their 
 reason." 
 
 The main principles of Buddhism are very simply summed 
 up in its Four Truths, which are to be found in every com- 
 pilation of the scriptures. These truths are : (i) the reality of 
 misery, which is perceived in distinct marks of sorrow, such 
 as birth, old age, disease, death, the removal of that which -is 
 loved, the presence of that which is disliked, the inability of 
 obtaining what is sought ; (2) the cause of the aggregation 
 of misery ; (3) the possibility of its destruction ; (4) the 
 means requisite. 
 
 " By rousing himself, by reflection, by restraint and con- 
 trol, the wise man may make for himself an island which no 
 flood can overwhelm " (Dhammapada). 
 
 " Make thyself an island, work hard, be wise ! When thy 
 impurities are blown away, and thou art free from guilt, thou 
 wilt enter into the heavenly world of the elect (Ariya) " (/#.). 
 
 Even rebirths and resurrections are of no value, without 
 the quality of the life is regenerated. 
 
 Buddha's reasons for his teachings show the result of his 
 long years of earnest struggle and thought, for which we owe 
 him a debt of gratitude ; since there is much that the world 
 may yet learn from him. Here is his golden rule : " As life
 
 PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. 161 
 
 is dear to one's self, it is dear also to other living beings ; by 
 comparing one's self with others, good people bestow pity on 
 all beings." Again : " Victory breeds hatred, the conquered 
 fares ill. He who has renounced victory and defeat alike, 
 fares well." " Let a man overcome anger by love ; let him 
 overcome evil by good ; let him overcome the greedy by 
 liberality, the liar by truth." This is, in another form, "If 
 any one smite thee on the one cheek, offer to him the 
 other." 
 
 " The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion 
 (of the law), but is not a doer of it, has no share in the 
 Samanna [priesthood], but is like a cowherd counting the 
 cows of others " (Dhammapada, 19). 
 
 " Those whose mind is well grounded in the elements of 
 knowledge ; who, having abandoned attachment, cling to that 
 which is free from attachment ; they who have destroyed 
 desire, and are full of light, become free (even) in this world " 
 (Dhammapada, 89). 
 
 " Man torments his like as long as he is prompted to do so. 
 And when others torment him, he torments in his turn. . . . 
 Every murderer ends by being a murderer's victim, every 
 victor a victor's, every slanderer a slanderer's, every man of 
 wrath the victim of a man of wrath. So, by the revolution 
 of acts, he who has been tormented, torments in his turn " 
 (Sanyutta-nikaya, I ; Sagatha, Kosala-Sanyutta, ii. 4, 5). 
 
 Perhaps the finest instance of splendid simplicity and 
 loving truth for which we are indebted to India, is to be 
 found in the following stanzas from the Dhammapada : 
 
 " He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed 
 me hatred in those who harbour such thoughts will never 
 cease. . . . For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time ; 
 hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule. And some do not 
 know that we must all come to an end here ; but others know 
 it, and hence their quarrels cease." 
 
 Here Buddha reached his highest range of inspired 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 thought. In this little morsel of language is crystallized all 
 that religion can teach. 
 
 Not to speak of primitive Christianity, we may assert, 
 without hope of disproof, that the world at large has not yet 
 reached the level of primitive Buddhism.
 
 163 
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT 
 GREECE, 
 
 I. 
 
 So much more attention is paid in the schools to the poetry, 
 mythology, and history of Greece, than to her gnomists and 
 ethical philosophers, that one falls into the habit of regarding 
 Hellenic glory as solely derived from consummate art and 
 exquisite Pagan life, and of doubting whether it can be made 
 to present on the spectrum of the mind any of the deep lines 
 of religious thought. Of Plato it is true, with his wealth of 
 ideal suggestiveness, his quasi-Christianism, something indeed 
 is known, as also of Aristotle ; but to the most distinctly 
 ethical remains of the Hellenic sages less attention is paid 
 than to the amours of an over-fabled Zeus, the brave battles 
 with the Persians, or the political history of Athens. 
 
 Perhaps there has been a tinge of unworthy jealousy of 
 sublime thought when found to antedate the Christian era. 
 It has been convenient for sectarian purposes, or consonant 
 with mediaeval ignorance, to regard the heathen world as 
 benighted in darkness, and remote from the love of truth or 
 consciousness of immortality. Marcus Aurelius has been 
 welcomed, but Pythagoras almost ignored ; Plutarch has been 
 preferred to Solon. 
 
 Perhaps also the door of the ancient philosophy has been 
 too firmly closed against the impatient modern tourist who 
 expects to see everything that there is to be seen in a day. 
 No way into it has been widened and made easy for the
 
 164 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 multitude, so that the prying nominalist should enjoy the 
 freedom of the shrine. It is not the way to bid for popular 
 favour to say such unpleasant truths as : 
 
 " Approach ye genuine philosophic few, 
 The Pythagoric life belongs to you ; 
 But far, far off, ye vulgar herd profane, 
 For Wisdom's voice is heard by you in vain : 
 And you, Mind's lowest link, and darksome end, 
 Good Rulers, Customs, Laws, alone can mend." 
 
 The leaders of the Salvation army would prophesy 
 smoother things than this to any one that would throw in his 
 lot with them. 
 
 Even in respect of Plato, if we put out of count the com- 
 paratively few men of culture, and take into view the great 
 reading masses, we might almost repeat, with a change of 
 significance, the words of Jerome, now nearly a millennium 
 and a half old : " Who is it that now reads Aristotle ? How 
 many people know Plato's books, or even his name ? Perhaps 
 in a corner some vacuous old man may be conning him over. 
 But of our rustics, our fishermen, the whole orb is speaking, 
 with them the entire world resounds." 
 
 The cause of this prejudice no doubt has been in the past, 
 that we had derived, through another channel, our main 
 stream of such spiritual wisdom as we had made our own. 
 The cause of the comparative neglect of the higher Greek 
 ethics at the present day, when philosophic studies are becom- 
 ing broadened, perhaps lies in the fact that it is being dis- 
 covered that the characteristics of the inmost Hellenic thought 
 are rather drawn from foreign sources than originating in a 
 national inspiration. In speaking of inmost thought we refer 
 to the ethics of life, the faith as to heaven and man, and omit 
 consideration of the phases of intellectual scepticism, or the 
 progress of physical science. 
 
 But there is one reason why we should do well to turn 
 more lovingly to the Greek thinkers, from the Gnomic Poet 
 to the Stoic Sage ; and that is, that what they do think they
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 165 
 
 think clearly, so that their expression is like the perfect carv- 
 ing of a statue, ample and well defined. 
 
 In case of question as to the neglect referred to, it may be 
 sufficient to point to the fact that there is no lately edited 
 text, and no recent translation whatever, published in this 
 country of the literary remains of the school of Pythagoras ; 
 that the works of a voluminous English Platonist of a former 
 generation are scarce in the book market, because when they 
 emerge from old libraries they are demanded for America ; 
 that it is only within a few years that Epictetus has appeared 
 in the series of translations that includes most of the works 
 of the dramatists, the historians, and the orators of Greek- 
 speaking tribes ; that of the remains of Heraclitus, Empe- 
 docles, Menander, Epicurus, Cleanthes to take names almost 
 at random there is no English version to be found ; while 
 Anacreon and Theocritus, as representing the gayest poetry 
 of paganism pure and simple, have, notwithstanding the 
 anomaly in a professedly anti-pagan land, enjoyed a consider- 
 able currency. 
 
 Linus is the name of the most ancient Greek poet, and is 
 mentioned in the " Iliad." Not prose, but poetry only, was 
 literature in Greece in his day : and the poet was the thinker. 
 He is, according to one legend, son of Apollo and of the 
 muse of choric dancing ; according to another the son of 
 Hermes, and of the muse of the azure robe ; and the invention 
 of the rhythm of verse and melody of music is ascribed to him. 
 Hercules, blind Thamyris, and Orpheus are said to have been 
 among his disciples. He is reputed to have written in Pelas- 
 gian characters, which Herodotus calls a barbarous, or extra- 
 Hellenic, language. The probable date of the Pelasgian epoch 
 is about seventeen centuries before our era, a time when Egypt 
 was in the height of her glory, when India was at its Vedic 
 period, and Moses was not yet born. The Pelasgian tribe 
 (rovers, wandering " storks," as the name probably implies) is 
 acknowledged to have brought into rude Greece a religious
 
 166 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 system and theology, to have established the Dodona oracle, 
 and instituted the Cabeiric mysteries, which seem to have had 
 a Phoenician origin. 
 
 The primitive character of the time is shown by its 
 remains, its massy walls, formed of polygonal blocks of 
 stone, roughly wrought rather by friction than by chisel. 
 
 Though Linus himself is named in Homer and Herodotus, 
 we only have fragments of his poems on the doubtful authority 
 of collectors of fifteen to twenty-two centuries after his time ; 
 so that, although it would be pleasant to note with what 
 optimism philosophy begins in the land that bore so much of 
 beauty, we must doubt whether we have any evidence of the 
 fact, or whether the following are veritable words of Linus : 
 
 " In all things we must hope ; for nothing at all is hopeless. 
 All things are easy unto God to perfect, and nothing is vain. 
 Mark how all by struggle is controlled throughout. 
 Never arrives an end, while always having ends. 
 What sort of source had this that is as it is ? 
 Immortal death so wraps all with mortality 
 All corruptible dies, and what subsists doth alter its guise, 
 With shows in circles of change and fashions of form 
 That veiled is the sight of the whole. It will be incorruptible, 
 And ever-during, insomuch as it has reached what it is. 
 The seventh day is of the good, the seventh is the birthday : 
 Of the first things is the seventh, the seventh the consummation." 
 
 Tradition carries on his name as that of a song or lay, sung 
 by a boy to the cithara, while the vintagers were at work. As 
 the name has been found in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt, 
 perhaps Linus is only a tradition of music ; an embodiment 
 of a soft, simple, plaintive melody. The Greek word ailinos, 
 which represents a crooning dirge, is said to be derived from 
 a cry signifying Ah for me, Linos. 
 
 In our word " linen " perhaps we hold the clue to the origin 
 of the name " Linus," in the flaxen string of the cithara. 
 
 Early Greek history is a singular compound of the poeti- 
 cally mythic with probable facts. Inachus from Phoenicia, 
 who builds Argos, and Cecrops from Egypt, who institutes the
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 167 
 
 Areopagus, stand in the list of early kings with Amphictyon, 
 who is the offspring of a sort of Greek Noah. Cadmus intro- 
 duces the alphabet from Phoenicia, Danaus brings a colony 
 from Egypt, Minos brings from Crete laws that lasted a thou- 
 sand years, and side by side with them is Eumolpus, reputed 
 the son of Poseidon, the sea god. He migrates from Thrace 
 to Attica, and is initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries of the 
 mother goddess of earthly plenty, Demeter, of which he 
 becomes hierophant. Of the family of Eumolpus, whose 
 descendants presided over the spiritualistic mysteries and 
 claimed from father to son the prophetic gift, was Musaeus the 
 bard, placed at 1426 B.C. in the Arundel marbles. From him, 
 the servant of the muses, comes our word " museum." His 
 words come down to us that for mortals of brief span of life 
 the sweetest refuge is to sing. 
 
 How often from heroic times, when life is heartily enjoyed, 
 comes an undertone of lament for its shortness, and conscious- 
 ness of the necessity of a sturdy cheerfulness. In periods 
 when the flower of national life seems overblown, the days are 
 too full of surfeit for either young or old to cry so eagerly for 
 more of them. 
 
 The following is among the fragments of Musaeus : 
 " For ever Art is better far than Strength." 
 
 In this single line, so trite in the midst of civilization, we 
 see the progress of a young community. The following is 
 more significant of an ethical bent : 
 
 " Like as the fruitful earth produceth leaves 
 Some on the ash tree die while others grow 
 Leaves of the race of men, they eddy too." 
 
 And the following shows the belief in an encompassing 
 cloud of spiritual vicegerents of God as having to do with the 
 direction of men, or perhaps marks the position held by the 
 oracle in the religious idea of the time : 
 
 " Gladly to hear what the immortal ones 
 To men assigned, from cowards marks the brave."
 
 1 68 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 It is significant how in times of simplicity of life in a 
 beautiful climate, when men are in the perfection of physical 
 health, and, therefore, on a materialistic hypothesis, there 
 would seem no reason to expect an under-current of mystery, 
 the problem of life with its spiritual solution is yet ever present. 
 Musaeus, though a priest, is a believer ; it is a most arrogant 
 and absurd assumption that the prophetic leaders of men were 
 always laughing in their sleeves, and practising deceits for a 
 wage. A servant of the oracle, he proclaims that to live in 
 blind revel of animal existence is cowardly ; but to open 
 the eyes and ears, and to face what gleams and whispers of 
 destiny may be caught from the undying world in its 
 relation with men, is the clearest sign that marks a noble 
 and brave man. 
 
 The name of Orpheus has so much allied with it, that we 
 may fairly imagine it to have been borne by a line of hiero- 
 phants, and to have been made sponsor for the mystical 
 legends of a cycle. Clement of Alexandria records thus the 
 opinions of his time : " Onomacritus the Athenian, who is 
 said to have been the author of the poems inscribed to 
 Orpheus, is ascertained to have lived in the reign of the 
 Pisistratidae, about the fiftieth Olympiad [the early part of 
 the sixth century B.C.] ; and Orpheus, who sailed with Hercules, 
 was the pupil of Musaeus. Amphion precedes the Trojan war 
 by two generations . . . the Crateres of Orpheus are said to 
 be the production of Zopyrus of Heraclea, and The Descent to 
 Hades that of Prodicus of Samos. Ion of Chios relates . . . 
 that Pythagoras ascribed certain works of his own to Orpheus. 
 Epigenes, in his book respecting The Poetry ascribed to Orpheus, 
 says that The Descent to Hades and the Sacred Discourse were 
 the production of Cecrops the Pythagorean ; and the Peplus 
 and the Physics of Brontinus." This account is little more 
 than hearsay to us, since a very large number of the books 
 which Clement cites are lost probably having perished in 
 the library in which he wrote. But the confused rumours
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 169 
 
 point at least to an Orphic traditional lore which was familiar 
 to Pythagoras. 
 
 Plato refers to " what is called the Orphic life " as a 
 discipline including among its tenets the doctrine of abstinence 
 from all things that have life, which would point to a brother- 
 hood of the Indian order, where bodily purification is an 
 essential. The story of Triptolemus, the minister of the 
 goddess Demeter, to whom Plato refers also as representing 
 that period, is a legend showing a familiarity with speculation 
 upon the relation of body and soul. Triptolemus is so favoured 
 by the earth-mother, on a special ground of gratitude, that 
 she feeds him with her own milk and places him on burning 
 coals during the night to destroy the particles of mortality 
 he had received from his parents. The natural mother, giver 
 of that body which is being transformed, so marvels at the 
 unearthly growth of her son, that she spies on Demeter and 
 the process is disturbed. 
 
 The best known story of Orpheus is that of his descent 
 into Hades. Having lost his wife, he gains, through the 
 music of a lyre received from Apollo, an admission to the 
 under-world, soothing even Cerberus, the dog-guardian of 
 Hades, with his strain. The deities of that region consent 
 to restore his lost bride, provided that on departing he forbears 
 looking behind him until he exchanges their borders for those 
 of earth. He promises, but either curiosity as to the process 
 of the re-incarnation, or his pent-up love for his yet unseen 
 wife, or a doubt whether she is actually following him, pre- 
 sumably gets the better of him. He sees her, but it is only 
 for a moment ; she vanishes in a dissolving vision, and can 
 be found no more. 
 
 Such stories as these it has been the fashion of late years 
 to take as mythological representations of natural facts ; and 
 some of the simply poetic impersonations of Greek fable no 
 doubt are to be so accounted for. But the theory has been 
 run to death, and has been too much of a mere theory. When
 
 170 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 we find in Egypt, long before the rudest beginnings of Greece, 
 the religious doctrine of an under-world with its Typhonic 
 beast, to which Cerberus corresponds, and find also in Aryan 
 books accounts of a similar entry into Hades, we are bound 
 to take such a Greek tradition as the above to be derived from 
 these foreign sources, and to have been in its essence passed 
 on from one priest to another as occult religious lore, rather 
 than originating locally as the spontaneous outburst of a 
 naturalistic poet. 
 
 What Orpheus is said to have known must constitute the 
 body of learning of a whole period at least. He is supposed 
 to have left metric writings on theology and cosmogony, 
 hymns, epigrams, treatises on agriculture, physics, astrology, 
 precious stones, botany, chorography, medicine, laws, and 
 matters relating to Argos. What we have now under his 
 name is but little, and probably most, if not all of it, of later 
 date than that of the Orphic tradition. In fact, to such 
 critical minds as Aristotle, Cicero, and Suidas, it appeared 
 probable that no single versicle certainly attributable to 
 Orpheus was then in existence. That there once were in 
 existence true Orphic verses there seems little doubt ; whether 
 the Pythagorean or Egyptian school fairly represented the 
 originals in what is given as Orphic it would be difficult to 
 judge. The following are specimens : 
 
 " I will utter to such as have the right ; the doors 
 Close ye forthwith on the profane ! " 
 
 \pr " Close ye upon your ears, profane ! "] 
 
 " But thou, 
 
 Musaeus, hark, son of light-bearing moon, 
 For truth I will declare ; and let not things 
 That formerly your bosom cogitated 
 Amerce you of dear life. But looking toward 
 The word divine, hang closely over it, 
 Keeping aright the heart's perceptive frame. 
 Yea, enter well the path without a turn, 
 And gaze upon the universal King ! 
 He is one, self-proceeding ; from the one
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 171 
 
 All that is born evolves ; circling therein 
 He inly acts ; himself no mortal sees, 
 But he sees all. To mortals are his gifts, 
 111 sequence after good, and bloody war, 
 And tearful woes. Beside the mighty king 
 There is none else, and him I may not see, 
 For round about him is established cloud. 
 Yea, every mortal's eyes a veil contain 
 A mortal pupil, powerless to perceive 
 Zeus who hath guard o'er all. Within the sky 
 That is as brass, upon a golden throne 
 Is he set firm, and lights upon the earth, 
 And stretches a right hand beyond the sea, 
 Past ocean's every side : the mountains high 
 Are of a tremble round, yea, rivers too, 
 And depths of pallid-foamed cerulean sea." 
 
 Again 
 
 " Ruler of Ether, Hades, Sea, and Land, 
 Who with thy bolts Olympus' strong-built home 
 Dost shake ; whom demons dread, and whom the throng 
 Of gods do fear ; whom, too, the fates obey, 
 Relentless though they be. O deathless One, 
 Our mother's sire ! whose wrath makes all things reel ; 
 Who mov'st the winds and shroud'st in clouds the world, 
 Cleaving wide Ether with thy lightning gleams, 
 Thine is the order 'mid the stars, which run 
 As thine unchangeable behests direct. 
 Before thy burning throne the angels wait, 
 Much-working, charged to do all things for men. 
 Thy young spring shines, all pranked with purple flowers ; 
 Thy winter with its chilling clouds assails ; 
 Thine autumn noisy Bacchus distributes. 
 Decayless, deathless, by undying ones 
 And none else utterable ! Greatest god 
 Over all gods by mighty fate, come, dread, 
 Unconquerable, vast, decayless one, 
 Whom the blue ether as a chaplet crowns." 
 
 " From Zeus all things proceed, Zeus is both male 
 And maid immortal, head and midst is he, 
 Earth's base and starry heaven's, the breath of all, 
 The force of tireless fire, the wide sea's root, 
 Sun and moon both, of all arch-fount and king, 
 One force, one spirit, source immense of all."
 
 172 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 These probably are much more modern than the date 
 ascribed to Orpheus. Plato quotes a fragment or two, 
 showing that there were Orphic collections existing in his 
 day. 
 
 The first lines quoted under the name of Orpheus are 
 perhaps more likely to be authentic than the rest, as 
 belonging to the period when religious rites were jealously 
 guarded from any but the initiated. The great ones were 
 few princes who were the centre of the community's wealth, 
 and had ornaments and drinking vessels of gold, while the 
 bulk of the people were in a state of almost savage simplicity, 
 touched by bravery, poetry, and superstition. As the palace 
 was inaccessible to the community, in whom the rich valuables 
 might but awaken a passion of rapine, so was the shrine of 
 religious studies also secluded, that no interloper should 
 disturb the repose necessary for the commune of the 
 priestesses with the invisible world, and that no one receiving 
 truths within an unprepared mind should alarm the vulgar 
 and destroy by force the only centres of profound wisdom. 
 
 Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, in his study of Orpheus, 
 very fairly shows that the hymns bearing the name were at 
 least destined for use by a line of ministering priests. They 
 are, in fact, sacrificial invocations, and show a personification 
 of natural powers within a wide poetic pantheism, which with 
 the enlightened worshipper at least has a monotheistic centre. 
 Though nymphs, demons, the muses, the furies, the fates 
 
 " Unchanged, aerial, wandering in the night, 
 Untamed, invisible to mortal sight," 
 
 and dwelling by the Stygian river, in Pluto's hidden realms 
 where 
 
 " White waters of the lake, 
 Falling into the sea with silvery whirls, 
 Burst from a fountain hid in depth of night," 
 
 are treated each and all as individual powers, and there is a
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 173 
 
 host of powerful deities, to whom worship is due, yet Zeus 
 " multiform deity " is within and at the back of all, the root 
 and breath of all things. In this pervasive power, even the 
 subordinate deities share, as being manifestations of divinity. 
 In the address to Here we have an example of this rather 
 complicated kind of pantheism : 
 
 " All things producing, for the breath of life 
 Without thee nothing knows: since thou, with all 
 Thyself in wondrous sort communicating, 
 Art mixed with all." 
 
 In the invocation to Apollo, there is naturally a trace of 
 the ancient sun-worship : 
 
 " Whose lucid eye 
 
 Light-giving all things views . . . this plenteous earth, 
 And ev'n beneath, through the dark womb of things, 
 In night's still, gloomy regions, and beyond 
 The impenetrable darkness set with stars." 
 
 Diana is addressed as " great nurse of mortals, earthly and 
 celestial," "dread universal queen." 
 
 Pallas, too, has universal attributes : 
 
 " Wisdom to the good, 
 And to the evil, madness : parent of war, 
 And counsel : thou art male and female, too : 
 Multiform dragoness, famed enthusiastic." 
 
 The goddess Demeter is the " giver of all things," 
 " supporter of all mortals ; " blessing man with plenteous 
 means of life mother Nature living yet. And in a 
 personification of Nature as a deity we may see how a 
 subordinate member of the Pantheon can be invested with 
 universal attributes to the extent of a particular sphere of 
 influence, without infringing upon the supreme unity of the 
 Father of Gods. 
 
 In the Orphic or pseudo-Orphic system we find, further, 
 a lower range of divine personages having relation to human
 
 174 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 life, but not credited with the attribute of universal sway. 
 " The Divinity of Dreams " is addressed as follows : 
 
 " Great source of oracles to human-kind, 
 When stealing soft, and whispering to the mind, 
 Through sleep's sweet silence, and the gloom of night, 
 Thy power awakes the intellectual sight, 
 To silent souls the will of Heaven relates, 
 And silently reveals their future fates." 
 
 Phanes or Protogonos, the exemplar of the universe, is 
 a divine emanation, an effulgence of the glory, and an 
 express image of the substance, so to speak, of the Supreme. 
 The Hebrew Angel of the Presence and the Gnostic Logos 
 are similar personifications of the powers and agencies of God. 
 The First-born is thus addressed : 
 
 " O mighty first-begotten, hear my prayer, 
 Twofold, egg-born, and wandering through the air ; 
 
 ***** 
 
 'Tis thine from darksome mists to purge the sight, 
 All-spreading splendour, pure and holy light." 
 
 Death is invoked in the same strain of poetical pantheism : 
 
 " Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds 
 By which the soul attracting body holds." 
 
 Thomas Taylor finds in Porphyry an explanation of the 
 meaning here, and bases a comment thereon in a style almost 
 purely Buddhistic : " Though the body, by the death which is 
 universally known, may be loosened from the soul, yet, while 
 material passions and affections reside in the soul, the soul 
 will continually verge to another body, and as long as this 
 inclination continues remain connected with body. But when 
 from the predominance of an intellectual nature, the soul is 
 separated from material affections, it is truly liberated from 
 the body, though the body at the same time verges and 
 clings to the soul, as to the immediate cause of its support." 
 
 The Homeric cycle of poems, whether the work of one 
 or of a group of rhapsodists, is really the firstfruits of Greek
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 175 
 
 literature. The Orphic writings claim to be earlier by some 
 three or four centuries, and no doubt there was bardic tradi- 
 tion from the Argonautic times ; but in all probability, in 
 passing from the reputed Orphic remains to Homer, we pass 
 up and not down the stream of time. 
 
 Homer being in mass of a hearty and vivid naturalism 
 with what it has of the supernatural, clearly designed for the 
 generality, whose superb bible it became, it would seem that 
 little attention is its due from the point of view of either 
 theism or sublime ethics. Pagan polytheism, with the rude 
 morals of a barbarous, if heroic time, has for the most part 
 been thought to be all to be expected from Homer. This, 
 indeed, is to be found there, and many a contradiction is to 
 be found within that external polytheism, as well as many a 
 questionable example in the sphere of morals. But there is 
 more in Homer than this. We find, in Indian works meant 
 for the people, instances where an attractive narrative is 
 designed as a thick coating of sugar for a small ethical pill. 
 We find in Druidic tradition verses in which the memory is 
 ingeniously cozened into taking up a morsel of moral counsel 
 interposed between the easiest and brightest of stanzas. The 
 traditions of primitive peoples, by whom moral aphorisms are 
 prized more highly than among the over-cultured and sceptical, 
 are wont to be transmitted in the form of pithy sententious 
 maxims, which easily pass current amongst unstudious and 
 simple folk and grow into a treasury of proverbial lore. 
 
 The Homeric singers wrought in this fashion ; and 
 scattered over the writings that have come down to us, are to 
 be found by careful search a number of little fragments, which 
 if gathered, would be recognized as an appreciable contribu- 
 tion to ethics. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone goes further than this when he says : " The 
 morality of the Homeric man is founded on duty, not to the 
 particular personages of the Olympian system, but to the 
 divinity, theos, or the gods in general, theoi. Sometimes to
 
 176 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Zeus ; not however as the mere head of the Olympian Court, 
 but as heir-general to the fragments and relics of the old 
 monotheistic traditions." 
 
 It is becoming generally recognized that in all religions 
 two forces have been at work : one the effort of the more 
 spiritual mind to cleanse the vision of the mental eye that has 
 turned toward the great problem of existence, and to concen- 
 trate and deepen the impression of Heaven's relation to us. 
 The other force is that of the unawakened minds disintegrating 
 and distorting all grand conceptions, splitting up large ideals 
 into small, and requiring even minor abstractions to be 
 showily clothed before they could attract any heed. It is this 
 complex form of popular demand, and attempt to satisfy it, 
 that has led to the absurd and self-contradictory mythologies 
 of polytheism. In Egypt the gods, to all but the eyes that 
 could penetrate beneath the mask, were lost in the multipli- 
 city of stony images that once were living symbols. In Greece 
 the art faculty absorbed a nation's spiritual dreamings into 
 beautiful visible forms, and tended to draw away the acute 
 consciousness of the invisible beneath the comfortable veil of 
 external things. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone says again : " If Homer can be exhibited 
 as the father of Greek letters in most of their branches, there 
 is one great exception, which belongs to a later development. 
 That exception was the philosophy of Greece ; which seems 
 to have owed its first inception to the Asiatic contact estab- 
 lished after the great eastern migration. The absence of all 
 abstract or metaphysical ideas from Homer is truly remark- 
 able. Of all poets he is the most objective, and the least 
 speculative." It is perfectly true that Homer is most poeti- 
 cally free from mystical obscurities, and that the formal 
 philosophy of Greece began after his time ; but we ought 
 scarcely to deny to the Homeric cycle of ballads the possession 
 of a fair quantity of the current coin of a simple philosophy. 
 Indeed, in the following, the same scholar supplements and
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 177 
 
 so corrects his doctrine respecting Homer : " In this splendid 
 work of art we trace the real elements of worship and of an 
 ethical system, drawing its strength from obligations to an 
 unseen Power ; to a plurality, which is also to a great extent 
 an unity, and which rules the world. Lastly, while some 
 portions of the scheme point us towards an earlier and also 
 a ruder state, and others in the direction of a later and corrupt 
 civilization, a third portion reveals a primitive basis of mono- 
 theism, and ideas in connection with it, which seem to defy 
 explanation, except when we compare them with the most 
 ancient of the Hebrew traditions." 
 
 If the religious philosophy of Greece has been neglected, 
 the error has lain the other way with regard to the study of 
 Homer. However rich may be the philosophic element of this 
 rhapsodic school, it was eminently a school of poetry, in 
 which even theology was for the most part regarded from the 
 side of the dramatic and the picturesque, and taken as it 
 existed in the popular mind, rather than as arising from any 
 earnest belief of the singer's own. Mr. Gladstone, as we have 
 shown, sees in Homer the remains of primitive monotheism, 
 but dares not go back further than to the Hebrews for its 
 source. Whether this monotheism be primeval or merely 
 prehistoric, there is in Homer comparatively little of it 
 
 Seneca, some eighteen centuries ago, was laughing at 
 the critics for disputing amongst themselves to which of the 
 philosophic sects of their time Homer had belonged. He is 
 discoursing (Ep. Ixxxviii.) upon the liberal arts, as being so 
 called because they enlarge the mind and become a free man ; 
 and he characterizes as puerile the stepping aside from the 
 study of wisdom into the weighing of syllables and the scan- 
 ning of verses. Especially he stigmatizes mere argumenta- 
 tiveness, and very wittily instances the discussions which had 
 turned upon Homer. " For one while," he says, " they make 
 him a stoic, in pursuit of virtue alone, and flying from pleasure, 
 so as not to be drawn thereby from what is right and fit, even 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 by a promise of immortality ; at another time they represent 
 him as an epicurean, highly extolling the state of a peaceful 
 city, whose inhabitants spend their time in songs and ban- 
 quets ; at another time as a peripatetic, allowing three sorts of 
 good ; at another time as an academic or sceptic, affirming 
 all things to be uncertain. Now to me he seems to be none 
 of these in particular, because their several doctrines are all 
 to be found in him." 
 
 This is as if we were to fight over Shakespeare, whether 
 he were to be pronounced a ritualist or an evangelical, a 
 spiritualist or a follower of Comte. The great minds, whether 
 among poets or philosophers, are nowise sectarian, though 
 their followers may strive often to constrain them to an 
 appearance of support of cramped and dogmatic views. 
 
 Learned volumes have been compiled, and especially in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, upon the Hebraizing 
 tendencies of Homer ; upon the question whether he was a 
 moral philosopher ; and also upon his theology, gnomology, 
 and psychology. 
 
 The theology of Homer is indeed most confusing. Repre- 
 senting the conceptions of his time by poetry rather than 
 preachment, he has not the unifying consciousness of a re- 
 ligious man, which with glowing faith and spiritual instinct 
 burns away minor external vagaries of belief, and fuses the 
 stray centralizing tendencies he finds into one harmonious 
 agreement. 
 
 The Greek poetic mind had a marvellous power of absorp- 
 tion from the more deeply religious thought of other peoples. 
 Egypt, India, Phoenicia, contributed not only conceptions of 
 deity, but cosmogonical plans and visions of the unseen. 
 With large, easy, artistic hand, Greece wrought them all into 
 her pantheon and her philosophy, as a modeller might blend 
 wet masses of different clays, or a sculptor fit to his work 
 alternate ivory and gold. 
 
 In the Homeric theology, divinity is seen in series after
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 179 
 
 series of diverse powers, in wondrous activities, on high, 
 below, afar, anigh, in forces of aid, of comfort, of gloom and 
 fear, in potencies both small and great. 
 
 There are the high Olympian deities, in whose king reside 
 whatever monotheistic elements were called for by the higher 
 consciousness of man, and whatever conceptions of majesty, 
 rule, and justice remained from older revelations of heavenly 
 things. 
 
 But Zeus, if to one Homeric singer he be true Lord of all, 
 yet with another he is made to do ungodly things ; and even 
 Zeus, according to a decaying tradition of an older theology, 
 is himself but God of God, being son of a careworn personifi- 
 cation of Time. In the Olympian group, after Zeus of the 
 bright sky, are Here, his sister-wife ; Athene, queen of the air, 
 or daughter of the sky, regarded generally as representing 
 wisdom, and in harmony with Zeus, while being on earth 
 the clear-seeing help of heroes. Phoibos, the god of arrowy 
 rays, with his twin sister Artemis, is akin to the sun, but 
 rather as moving in its far-darting beams than as attached 
 to its bulk. Hephaistos is fire flame, a mechanical power, 
 occupying a menial rather than an exalted position in 
 Olympus. Ares is stormy turbulence personified, a confusing 
 influence, belonging to the din rather than to the direction 
 of war. Aphrodite is brightness rising from sea-foam, and 
 flushing passion of love. Hermes is the intellectual faculty 
 and the emblem of craft, with a messenger's office and a 
 movement like the wind. In many respects he corresponds 
 with the Egyptian Thoth, being, like him too, the guide of 
 souls bound for Hades. 
 
 There are the earth-pervading deities, human-formed 
 blossomings of Nature, representing rich wealth and summer, 
 and the power and elevation of wine. There are the under- 
 world deities, reigning over a world hidden from the sun, but 
 with the power themselves of visiting the light of Olympus. 
 Hades being localized beneath the earth, the under-world
 
 l8o THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 gods became the patron deities and guardians of the treasures 
 of the mines. From the mystic Hades come the avenging 
 lights, the Erinyes, who can see in the dark and discover 
 evil deeds. The attendant ministers of the Governor of 
 Hades are also Night, Sleep, Death, and Dream. Among 
 lesser deities is Poseidon, the lord of the forces of the sea, 
 in whose group of powers are water-dwellers and masters 
 of sea monsters, and haunters of sea caves and whirlpools, 
 river-gods, tutelary nymphs and deities of woods, wells, and 
 mountains, flocks and herds, with the less gentle persons of 
 the Sirens of blandishment and the Harpies of havoc and 
 destruction. There are inspirers, messengers, servants, and 
 poetic impersonations without end ; Hours, Muses ; Iris, the 
 rainbow messenger ; Themis, the oracular will of Zeus and 
 dispenser of justice ; Eileithya, the moon-ray loosener of day's 
 tense and highly strung cords, and president over travail ; the 
 Charites who hold hands and dance around us, typifying 
 graces and favours flowing to and fro, the Hearth-fire god- 
 dess, emblem of domestic truth and fair dealing ; Aisa, the 
 uttered word of Zeus and type of destiny. Among fates and 
 powers were Ate human folly and mischief becoming a fate 
 or doom Discord, Fear, Rumour, Uproar, Conflict, and 
 Prowess. 
 
 The faith that sees God everywhere, and regards the various 
 machineries of nature as provinces swayed by divine emana- 
 tions, may be a more real and glowing one than that which 
 chains its conception of deity within an iron cage of doctrinal 
 bars and bolts ; but, with such a crowd of divine persons as 
 we find in Homer, and with the conception of Zeus as 
 almighty ruler only here and there apparent, we can scarcely 
 agree to regard the Homeric tradition in the light of a reac- 
 tion against the belief in polytheistic agencies. It seems 
 rather to constitute a poetic assent to a polytheism enhanced 
 by pantheistic sympathy and occasionally inspired by a 
 glimpse of the unity of the source of law.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 18 1 
 
 In intellectual moods it is possible to shut out from view 
 the occasions, too insignificant for scientific apparatus to note, 
 in which circumstance seems to adjust itself to the individual 
 to become as it were confidingly personal ; and this without 
 any natural law that the scientific mind so coldly defines, 
 being in the least degree shaken. From instincts left to them- 
 selves, and minds not set in the groove of specializing studies, 
 it will scarcely be possible absolutely to exclude the sense of 
 mysterious guidance ; and we may ever expect a repugnance 
 to the frigid theories that would condemn the universal ether 
 never to vibrate beneath warning whispers, or subconscious 
 currents of communion. 
 
 In Homer we find dim popular instincts of this kind 
 enlarged into definite form, with a result that there are pre- 
 sented, a motley crowd of anthropomorphic deities endowed 
 with noble attributes, but mingling therewith human qualities 
 not only of virtue but of vice. 
 
 When in the Iliad Zeus thunders, it is regarded as a 
 providential sign ; which is superstition, and even harmful to 
 poetry if too largely introduced. A sign like this which to 
 the scientific man denotes that constant play of physical forces 
 upon the equilibrium of which our natural lives depend being 
 so evidently addressed to no single individual, could only be 
 made spiritually momentous relatively to each different super- 
 stitious mood to which it appeals. To a poet the coincidence 
 of a calamity with an eclipse or a storm, or the flight of an 
 ominous bird, might seem appropriate ; but a priest who had 
 to listen to a variety of human complaints and sorrows, would 
 soon discover that there was no inevitable connection between 
 the supposed cause and effect ; save that darkness might 
 produce dejection, a storm alarm, or the sudden entry of any 
 unwonted thing a panic. Or, discovering that in certain parts 
 of the earth an east wind, by reason of the harshness it 
 gathers from the regions it traverses, frets the nerves of sensi- 
 tive folk, and so may prepare the ground for quarrels ; or that
 
 182 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 a thunderstorm is often heralded by a sense of discomfort 
 affecting both men and brutes ; priest, poet, and scientist 
 might all be at one. 
 
 We must not attempt to find philosophic order or ethical 
 centre in the Homeric tradition, for the singers of the epic did 
 not profess to focus thought, but only to catch a gleam from 
 each pencil of bright rays that attracted their imagination. 
 
 The stories that cluster round Zeus are evidence enough of 
 the impossibility of proving Homer consistent. First there 
 are generalizations not incompatible with a view of Zeus as 
 the Supreme Being in a monotheistic sense. Events occur 
 because the will of Zeus is being accomplished. If he nods 
 assent to anything yet unfulfilled, the subordinate hierarchy 
 may feel full confidence, " for this from me is the greatest 
 pledge with the immortals ; for whatever is mine that I shall 
 sanction by the nod of the head is not to be retracted, nor is it 
 fallacious nor unfulfilled." He restrains all other immortal 
 powers until that fulfilment. Zeus is the most powerful. 
 Honour is from Zeus. Even a bodeful dream, and that which 
 is to mislead, is from Zeus, and performs his fateful purpose. 
 He calls all immortal powers whatsoever to council, and so 
 becomes the supreme will, for there is no word of refusal. 
 
 There is a beautiful utterance put into the mouth of 
 Hector : " Thou biddest me obey birds of far-sweeping wing, 
 but these I nowise regard, nor care, whether they rush to 
 the right toward both dawn and sun, or to the left toward 
 the darkening west. But let us obey the will of mighty Zeus, 
 who ruleth all, mortal and immortal. There is one augury, 
 the best, to be a bulwark of our fatherland." 
 
 Of the great deity Phoibos Apollo, it is the subordinate 
 attribute to declare to men the unerring counsel of Zeus. 
 
 The aged Trojan monarch Priam would have distrusted 
 any order of earthly beings, even the heaven-commissioned 
 prophet, soothsayer, or priest, but having had word and vision 
 from a deity direct, and this only a bright little wind-footed
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 183 
 
 messenger from Zeus, he follows implicitly the injunctions 
 given him. It is not only because he has seen Iris and beheld 
 her face to face that he obeys, but because she comes as ambas- 
 sadress from Zeus, who, though remote, is full of care and pity. 
 
 Zeus fulfils not the intentions of all men. A well-mean- 
 ing counsel is one " not without God." If a tyrant is hated, 
 the fact is to be reverentially regarded, for the people may be 
 following for their oracle the very voice of God. On the 
 other hand, obedience is due to a ruler, because his sceptre is 
 from Zeus. " God, if he be willing, can save a man from a 
 distance." " A match for many peoples is the man whom 
 Zeus cherishes in his heart." 
 
 These conceptions might be found in any monotheistic 
 scriptures. There are in Homer passages closely akin to such 
 expressions as the following : 
 
 "God is with us at our head" (2 Chron. xiii. 12). "Let 
 not the army of Israel go with thee ; for the Lord is not 
 with Israel . . . but if thou wilt go, do it, be strong for the 
 battle : God shall make thee fall before the enemy, for God 
 hath power to help, and to cast down " (2 Chron. xxv. 7, 8). 
 " Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth there not 
 evil and good ? " (Lam. iii. 38). " Both riches and honour 
 come of thee, and thou rulest over all ; and in thine hand is 
 power and might ; and in thine hand it is to make great, and 
 to give strength unto all " (i Chron. xxix. 12). " I will lay 
 thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt 
 know that I am the Lord " (Ezek. xxxv. 4). 
 
 The intense consciousness of an arbitrary ruling power 
 manifested in the Hebrew Scriptures far transcends anything 
 of the kind to be found in Homer, where the sense of God as 
 a patriotic helper bringing resistless aid, or an angry smiter 
 with terrible calamities in his hand, is largely modified both 
 by pantheistic tendencies and the pagan revels of the Olympian 
 circle. 
 
 But in current ethics there are many resemblances between
 
 1 84 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the Hebrew and the Greek. That the counsel of the Lord 
 remaineth for ever ; that God is a witness of covenants and 
 oaths ; that counsel is to be asked of God as to the prospering 
 of the way ; that he has knowledge of all things, and measures 
 the actions of men ; that he makes poor and rich, brings low 
 and lifts up ; that kings are his appointment ; that he can 
 turn an enemy's counsel into folly ; that one man may put 
 a thousand to flight if God will ; that no man can see God's 
 face and live ; these are views that with very little difference 
 in expression may be found in Homer. Both books manifest 
 the same simple and resigned acceptation of circumstances as 
 they are, the same belief in dream-warnings and in the inspired 
 utterances of prophet and seer, the same recognition of the 
 duty of honour to the aged and the stranger. Coupled with 
 this pity for the foreigner when a defenceless unit, there is 
 the same repugnance for aliens in mass, the " gentile " and 
 the " barbarian " being equally outside the pale of reasonable 
 sympathy. There is the same care to offer in sacrifice no 
 blemished victim, the same honour of rectitude, notwithstand- 
 ing the most serious lapses in both, though the subtlety of the 
 Greek leads him to accord also a sly respect to the cunning 
 that outwits. This quality is foreign at least to the ideal of 
 the H ebrew, who obtained his results by a close perseverance, 
 a marvellous aptitude for detail, a somewhat cold sobriety 
 and far-seeing prudence, and a knowledge of the weaknesses 
 of others a combination which has enabled him to get the 
 better of his competitors without any need to resort to gross 
 fraud. Jacob deceives, but he is not a match for Odysseus. 
 
 There is manifest both in Homeric and Hebrew ethics 
 the perplexity caused by-*he fact that the worser things have 
 sway, and the wicked remain in power. There is in both a 
 fatalism with regard to the duration, if not the main contour, 
 of a man's earthly career. Even in the later Hebrew scrip- 
 tures the death of one who is in danger does not occur when 
 it might have been expected, for " his time had not yet come."
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 185 
 
 In both is the recognition of the prophetic power to foresee 
 certain lines of the career, both of a man and of a people. 
 
 There are rare touches, even in the Hebrew scriptures, of 
 a respect paid to the vigour of physical life which is very like 
 gentile or pagan pride. Jehovah, like Zeus or Ares, makes 
 the hands to war and the fingers to fight. David and Samson 
 might both be Homeric heroes. 
 
 If the object were to compare the Homeric with the 
 Hebrew traditions, a multitude of parallelisms might be pro- 
 duced ; but the subject in which the likeness is manifested 
 is most often outside the range of ethics or religion, and 
 belongs rather to current proverbial worldly wisdom. 
 
 Besides the monotheistic view of Zeus, there is a less 
 dignified conception, according to which he is one of three 
 brothers, and has his supremacy only by the mortal law of 
 birthright, and through his superior prowess. He is some- 
 what superior to the other deities, but different rather in 
 degree than in kind. He can, if he so wills, make a golden 
 cloud to overshroud himself, which even the sun-deity cannot 
 pierce. He claims to be superior to Phoibos, "since I am 
 older and know more." He is stigmatized by his sister-wife 
 as cruel and overbearing. He is anxious while his purposes 
 are tediously evolving themselves under opposition. He does 
 not pervade the universe, for there are times when he is 
 absent from Olympus, on a visit elsewhere ! He shows 
 irritation, he is deceived by blandishment. 
 
 If Athene and Zeus together are on the side of a man, 
 it is open to question whether that is enough. There are 
 differences arising in Olympus, Zeus, and other deities ranging 
 themselves obstinately on the one side, while all the rest 
 oppose. Again, Athene shows a weak side of personal feeling 
 when she is pleased by the implied flattery of an only offering 
 or a first prayer being made to her. 
 
 We find in Homer also the naturalistic view of deity, in 
 which Zeus embodies in himself all shining splendour of sky,
 
 i86 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 holds in his hand all force of thunderbolt, and terrifying roar 
 of the elements. He is the whirlwind of retribution, the 
 torrent of rain, the arouser of tumult, the sender down upon 
 men of dewdrops, moist with blood. He is not the actual 
 sun, for we find the address, " O father Zeus, and thou O 
 Sun, who beholdest and hearest all things." 
 
 In- the fourteenth book of the Iliad there is a beautiful 
 picture, singularly paralleled in some of the Indian scriptures, 
 of the divine earth gushing forth with new productiveness of 
 herb and flower beneath his couch when the deity is under 
 the influence of a fresh impulse of love. 
 
 Again, Zeus is part, an important element only, of a 
 divine Pleroma. " All men have need of the gods." " The 
 gods are bestowers of all things." " It was done against the 
 will of the immortal gods, wherefore it could not remain 
 perfect for any long continuance." " Zeus certainly knows 
 this, and the other immortal gods." " It is easy for the gods 
 to exalt and debase mortals." 
 
 There is also a system, or dynasty, or group of agents 
 with which Zeus, under some aspects, is regarded as having 
 little or no connection. By a very anthropomorphic imagina- 
 tion of deity, Sleep is invoked as " King of all gods and of 
 all men," and is bidden to lull Zeus. Sweet Sleep, it is true, 
 quails at her office, and affirms that she can only approach 
 Zeus by his own command. Eventually she aids in subduing 
 him. Night, in the same humanistic fancy, is styled " van- 
 quisher of gods and men." Destiny is supreme. In another 
 place Zeus is above Fate. But when it is said that a mortal's 
 life is what Fate at his birth wove in the thread of his career, 
 it is left unsaid whether Fate is an independent power, or one 
 of the attributes of Zeus. And yet Pallas addressing him 
 implies his power to undo fate : " O father, hurler of white 
 thunder, gatherer of dark clouds . . . dost thou wish to 
 deliver from sad death a man who is mortal and long ago 
 destined to fate ? Do it ; but all we other gods will not
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 187 
 
 assent to thee." Ocean is a primeval Titan, perhaps repre- 
 senting flowing Time. Zeus has warred with Titans, who are 
 more ancient than himself. These hoary deities war among 
 themselves as if rude elemental forces, owning no allegiance 
 to the neoteric law-giver of Olympus. Ocean is the parent of 
 the gods ; but the belief seems to have varied whether, when 
 the question is fairly faced, these primitive perpetual powers 
 are to be regarded as predecessors of Zeus. The- Cyclopes, 
 monstrous children of nature, have no laws, and trust in the 
 immortals ; but, with some contradiction, they claim to care 
 nought for ^Egis-bearing Zeus or the blessed gods, by reason 
 of being vastly superior to them. There is a certain similarity 
 here to the anomalous position of the mythological Satan, 
 who is of the creation of God, but becomes a rebel, and asserts 
 his own independence. Such a conception has very naturally 
 arisen : to us who behold so small a span of life at once, it 
 easily seems as if eternal purposes were being frustrated by 
 delays and oppositions that to a larger view might appear as 
 appertaining even to the purposes themselves. 
 
 The following rather undignified picture is the Homeric 
 way of settlement of the question of the divine headship of 
 Zeus : " Thunder-rejoicing Zeus made an assembly of deities 
 on the loftiest peak of many-topped Olympus. Himself 
 haranguing them, the deities all gave subservient ear : 
 ' Hearken to me, all gods and goddesses, that I may tell 
 what the soul within my breast ordains. Let, therefore, no 
 female deity, nor any male, attempt infringement of this my 
 word ; but do ye all at once assent, that I may very promptly 
 bring these businesses to issue. Whomsoever of the gods 
 I shall discover gone apart and wishing to give aid either to 
 Trojans or to Greeks, smitten so as to be no pleasant sight, 
 shall he return to Olympus, or I will seize and hurl him into 
 gloomy Tartarus, far, far from hence, where beneath the earth 
 is a profound abyss, and iron portals, and a threshold of brass, 
 as far below Hades as from earth is heaven ; then shall he
 
 1 88 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 know how far I am of all gods the mightiest. But come, 
 deities, attempt it, that ye all may know. Get from heaven a 
 golden chain suspended, all hang therefrom ye gods and 
 goddesses ; yet would ye not pull down from heaven to earth 
 your supreme counsellor Zeus, not even were ye to exert 
 yourselves in no trifling way. But when, in sooth, I should 
 seriously wish to pull it, haply I could draw it up with earth 
 and sea to boot. Then, indeed, would I bind the chain around 
 the top of Olympus, and all these should hang in the high 
 welkin. So far doth my power overlap both gods' and men's.' " 
 
 This is a curious, rude, early picture. With indisputable 
 power resident in the king of the gods, none should have 
 needed to be told of it. Coleridge very fairly remarks upon 
 this fragment of barbarous theology : " Although the supre- 
 macy of Jove comes far short of the true conception of 
 almighty power, the characteristic point which seems to be 
 fairly established is that he is the active and ruling power of 
 the popular mythology, the supreme and despotic chief of an 
 aristocracy of weaker divinities, accustomed to consult them 
 and liable to their opposition and even violence ; yet, upon 
 the whole, substantially aristocratic and independent of any 
 recognized permanent superior." 
 
 Sometimes we find regard paid to deity in the general 
 sense of spiritual power, and without any special reference to 
 the Olympian Zeus : " Whenever contrary to deity (daimon) 
 man would fight with a hero whom a god honours, swift upon 
 him is vast destruction hurled." 
 
 Of the subordinate deities the attributes are as various and 
 contradictory as of Zeus himself. When contention and " the 
 worse things prevail," Hephaistos fears that his enjoyment 
 of the banquet will be impaired. It takes two deities, one of 
 them becoming wounded, to save one earthly warrior from 
 another. Sometimes they seem to represent only special 
 attributes ; Here applies to Aphrodite when she desires a 
 special gift of loveliness and allurement. When blundering
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 189 
 
 Ares, the representative of the din of war, is sulky and rebel- 
 lious, it is the goddess of wisdom who, greatly fearing for the 
 whole group of Olympians, leaps forth to prevent the danger 
 by bringing Ares to his senses. The spite of unruly 
 Poseidon punishes a tribe for a manifestation of human kind- 
 ness in escorting strangers home. Pallas even stands in awe 
 of this monstrous sea uncle of hers. Hermes is the unblush- 
 ing representative of craft and deceit. Athene becomes 
 quite friendly with Odysseus, who has just prevaricated 
 cleverly, on the common ground of that cunning of which he 
 is an arch representative on earth as she in heaven. Poseidon 
 reproaches other deities for leaving a fray without partaking 
 of it. The deities can be wounded by mortals, but are unslay- 
 able. Phoibos said to Achilles, who was hotly pursuing him, 
 " Thou canst not slay me, since I am not one doomed to die." 
 Pallas passes like a breath of wind into a room with closed 
 doors. Mortals are of a humbler size than deities. The 
 subordinate deities often fulfil rather the functions attaching 
 to the word daimon in its post-Homeric sense, that of atten- 
 dant spirit or genius, than of the Divinity which the term 
 originally implied. They are friendly to their heroic favour- 
 ites, and have some control over any natural force with which 
 they may be specially allied. Even Circe can see and 
 predict a. little way ahead of events. Earth-haunting deities 
 can manifest themselves to one mortal only out of two, if 
 they choose. The sight of a manifested god is attended with 
 danger. Though " the race of the immortal gods and of men 
 that walk on the earth is no wise similar/' yet the spheres 
 seem almost to touch. While deities manifest themselves 
 daimonically, the more heroic mortals appear to develop into 
 a race of demi-gods, with approximating attributes. Deities 
 of both sexes are subject to passion, mingling with heroic men 
 or lovely women. The offspring that results from sons of gods 
 and daughters of men, or from daring hero mated with com- 
 pliant goddess, is distinguished as being above the common.
 
 igo THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 A mortal cherished by a motherly deity is subjected to a 
 chrism of ambrosia and fire intended to render him immortal 
 and free from the lower necessities of mortal life, from subjec- 
 tion to injury and the corruption of age. 
 
 This is the beneficence of daimonic influence ; the reverse 
 is manifested in a number of ungainly and monstrous beings 
 who are " an immortal evil, best to flee from." They seem to 
 represent a mingling of the terrors of natural plagues and 
 visitations with a notion of a debased sort of spiritual beings. 
 
 We might well expect that, with such heterogeneous 
 notions of deity, the morals of the heroes would be somewhat 
 various too. If the Iliad is meant to convey any lesson, it is 
 that of the ruin wrought by blinding passion and the arro- 
 gance that becomes quarrelsomeness. Achilles addresses his 
 goddess mother : " May I straightway die, since destiny would 
 not have it that I should succour my comrade who is slain ; 
 for he verily hath perished far from his native country, whereas 
 he longed for me to be his doom's averter. But now, since I 
 shall not return to my dear fatherland, nor have become any 
 light of help to Patroclus or my other comrades who have been 
 subdued in numbers by noble Hector ; while I sit beside the 
 ships an useless weight to the soil, though I am such as is 
 none other of the brazen-mailed Achaians in war howbeit, in 
 council there are verily others superior : Would that therefore 
 contention might perish from among gods and men, yea, 
 anger, which is wont to impel even the fully wise to bitterness, 
 and which, sweeter far than dropping honey, rises like a smoke 
 in the hearts of men ; thus but now did Agamemnon, king of 
 men, put rage in me. But though sorely anguished, let us 
 leave these things as past and done, controlling from necessity 
 our dear passion in ou r breasts. But now I go, that I may 
 find Hector, the destroyer of the dear head ; and for me I 
 accept death whensoever Zeus shall please to accomplish it 
 with the other immortal gods. For not even did the might 
 of Herakles escape death, who was the dearest man to king
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 191 
 
 Zeus, Cronos-born ; but fate subdued him, and the grievous 
 wrath of Here. So also shall I lie when I am dead, if a like 
 fate have been my portion. But now may I bear away 
 illustrious glory, and compel some one of the Trojan women 
 and deep-bosomed Dardanians to heave frequent sighs, wiping 
 away with both hands the tears from her tender cheeks ; and 
 may they recognize that I have had a long cessation from 
 battle. Wherefore hinder me not from the combat, although 
 loving me dearly, for thou wilt not persuade me." Here is 
 self-reproach and the sadness of approaching fate, and yet an 
 acknowledgment of the cleaving still to the course that has 
 borne such bitter fruit, as the manliest way to end. 
 
 Agamemnon, a meaner character, throws his sins upon 
 fate : " Often were the Achaians already telling this story to 
 me and rebuking me, yet I am not to blame ; but Zeus and 
 Fate and shade-roaming Erinys, who during the assembly 
 cast a sad injury into my mind on the day when I myself 
 took back the reward of Achilles. But what haply could I 
 do ? for the deity accomplishes all things. Venerable 
 daughter of Zeus is pernicious Ate, who injures all. She has 
 tender feet, for she never approaches the ground ; but in 
 good sooth she makes her walks over the heads of men. 
 Verily at one time she injured Zeus, who they say is the very 
 chiefest of men and gods. . . . He straightway seized Ate 
 by her head of shining curls, enraged in his mind, and swore 
 a mighty oath that Ate, who injures all, should never revisit 
 Olympus and the starry heaven. Thus saying, he cast her 
 from the starry heaven, whirling her round with his hand, and 
 quickly she reached the works of men." 
 
 A different opinion upon the conduct of man is put into 
 the mouth of Zeus : 
 
 Ye powers, how mortals do reproach the gods ; 
 From us, say they, proceed their ills, whereas 
 Their own infatuate sins do bring upon them 
 Woes that transcend the destiny of fate."
 
 192 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Ajax, a plain rough warrior of immense personal prowess, 
 a man of large bulk, who is given an entire chine at the feast 
 after a great battle, prays the manliest prayer in the book : 
 " Zeus father, do thou but liberate the sons of the Achaians 
 from darkness ; make a clear atmosphere, and grant us to see 
 with our eyes ; then destroy us in the light, if thus it be 
 pleasing to thee ! " In the mouth of Hector we find the old 
 proverb that we know in so many forms, but chiefly as " They 
 that take the sword shall perish by the sword." " The war- 
 god treats all alike, yea and slays outright the slayer." The 
 same truth of retribution is expressed in another form : 
 " Such word as thou speakest, to such shalt thou have to 
 listen : " with which we may compare, " With what judgment 
 ye judge, ye shall be judged ; with what measure ye mete, 
 it shall be measured unto you." 
 
 The Homeric warrior exults in his prowess, and has a 
 mighty appetite for broiled lumps of flesh, being a very 
 different man from those gentle beings, of whom there was a 
 tradition in his time, who were " milk-nourished, of simple 
 life, and most just men." But even the warrior, when he 
 comes to consider life by itself, is represented as falling into 
 a sober attitude of resignation. The theory of mortal life 
 which the poet presents to us is rather sad than otherwise, not 
 to say, pessimistic : " There is nothing any way more wretched 
 than man, of all creatures that breathe and move over the 
 earth," says Zeus. " The earth nourishes nothing weaker than 
 man," says Odysseus, " of all things whatever that breathe and 
 creep upon the earth." Of her son Achilles, Thetis says, " As 
 long as he lives to me, and beholds the light of the sun, he suffers 
 sorrow." Achilles himself says to aged Priam : " The gods 
 destined to hapless mortals that they should live wretched 
 while they themselves are free from care. There lie on the 
 threshold of Zeus two cases of gifts, which he bestows, the one 
 of evils, with the other one of good. To whomsoever thunder- 
 rejoicing Zeus may mingle and give them, sometimes he falls
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 193 
 
 into evil, sometimes into good : but to whomsoever he gives 
 of the evil, he makes him exposed to injury ; hungry calamity 
 pursues him over the bounteous earth, and he wanders about 
 in honour neither of gods or mortals." In the Homeric Epi- 
 grams, we find the cause of these gloomy views, they are the 
 tired opinions of a puzzled mind : " Although there are many 
 things obscure to mortals, yet nothing is more obscure to men 
 than their own mind." The state of things at the present 
 day would be terrible indeed for obfuscation and wretched- 
 ness, were we to carry forward to ourselves, in a mathematical, 
 rather than a poetical sense, and as the basis of our pedigree, 
 the saying of the Odyssey, " Few sons are like their father, 
 more are worse, but few are better than their father." 
 
 If we may define morals as a set of doctrines and customs, 
 and ethics as principles on which such doctrines and customs 
 may be founded, it is plain that in the Homeric traditions 
 there is more of the former than of the latter element. And 
 yet, though the deities are not infrequently of dubious 
 principles and conduct, and the men are as often little more 
 than blustering animals, the immortal voice of conscience 
 makes itself heard among them. Odysseus, shifty as he is, 
 appreciates what a good father would enjoin upon a son, and 
 exhorts Achilles in words probably impressed upon himself in 
 his youth, " My son, Athene and Here will bestow valour, if 
 they choose, but restrain within thy breast thy great-hearted 
 soul, because humanity is better." Achilles, when he opens 
 his mind, declares that " hateful as the gates of Hades is he 
 who hides one thing in his mind while he utters another." 
 Treaty-breaking is a term of reproach, and this amongst a 
 people prone by character to forget righteousness in subtlety. 
 The laws of hospitality, a breach of which would have entailed 
 infamy, show how, under the spell of an unwritten tradition, 
 unruly hatred, jealousy of the foreigner, and predatory instincts 
 could be curbed. A race, however rude, that holds to such a 
 maxim as that " all strangers and beggars are from Zeus," we 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 THE FATHERS OP JESUS. 
 
 cannot ourselves afford to contemn, for though the saying 
 maybe too general, and mean bad political economy, its spirit 
 is excellent, and it represents a humanitarian conception to 
 which the modern rough and cad have by no means been 
 enabled to rise, notwithstanding the constraining influences of 
 a so-called Christian civilization. 
 
 Glory, in the Homeric religion, is a commission from 
 above. Before a combat a prayer rises up to Zeus from one 
 camp to grant victory to their own champion ; but, if Zeus 
 loves the hero of the hostile ranks, to grant equal might and 
 glory to both. When "ten thousand fates of death" are 
 pressing on them, a man cries to his friend, " Let us on ; 
 either we shall give glory to some one, or some one to us." 
 This is not an ignoble spirit, though its manifestation is in 
 bloodshed. The wife of long-absent Odysseus remains to 
 this day an ideal example the type of constancy ; while his 
 faithful and warm-hearted servant is a character that prouder 
 peoples than the tribes of the Homeric ballads might be glad 
 to own. 
 
 The other- world conceptions of the Homeric time deserve 
 special notice. Though they are affected by ignorance of 
 physical facts, there are more pretentious doctrinal systems 
 in which such conceptions are not much more complete or 
 consistent. 
 
 The earth, to the mind of the Homeric bard, was not 
 spherical, but plano-convex, or, perhaps, convex above, con- 
 cave below. The upper surface was only slightly rounded, 
 like the broad back of the sea. In the midst is Mount 
 Olympus, of indefinite height, and rising into ethereal regions 
 unknown to man. Olympus is not in the sky, but above it ; 
 and yet it is not stated that it derives its light otherwise than 
 from the sun of our system. Around the world flows the 
 primeval deity Ocean, scarce distinguishable from the firma- 
 ment or heaven. The spirit disembodied by death, according 
 to the Egyptian faith, navigated this stream on its journey to
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 195 
 
 the unseen world, or Hades. According to the Greek idea, 
 the way to the infernal regions was round the verge by Ocean 
 or by passage through a chasm in the earth. The sun, in the 
 poem, threatens that he will cease shining upon the supernal 
 regions, and will illumine this under-world. In his ordinary 
 daily course he was regarded as enshadowed by this mighty 
 ocean stream from the time of his setting until the dawn. 
 Tartarus is a lower depth than Hades, and a place of 
 punishment for the wicked and rebellious. Under Tartarus 
 are the Titan gods, an ancient mysterious dynasty of force. 
 Hades is as much above Tartarus as Olympus is above earth. 
 But from every place on earth unto Hades there was an equal 
 road, an inspired statement of a fact requiring a mystic and 
 spiritual explanation. 
 
 The Homeric notions of the future state of the dead are 
 most curious and interesting. The apparition of Achilles, 
 when Odysseus says to cheer him, " Take it not sadly that 
 thou art dead," replies, " I would choose to be on earth and a 
 hired servant to another, a man of low estate without much 
 livelihood, rather than to rule over all the departed dead." 
 Achilles was a man of intense energy and passion, and in his 
 mouth such a sentiment is very fitly put ; but the conception 
 is purely humanistic, and the thought proceeds from the 
 dramatic sense of the poet rather than from any mystic 
 message of the shade. The primary Homeric idea of the 
 effect of the black cloud of death is evidently the blotting out 
 of the life of the senses, and of that sane intellect which so 
 well adjusts itself to the affairs of earth. Such a repugnance 
 is most natural among men accustomed to see violent death 
 threatening them in their prime, and in the very midst of 
 vigorous interests of life. There is no priest at the elbow of 
 the Homeric heroes to declare the reality of other-world life. 
 And in fact there is no other-world life to speak of in a soul 
 that is starving on the spiritual side, and finding manifestation 
 in the sense delights and an animal energy only. We need
 
 196 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 not wonder, therefore, at the picture presented in Homer of 
 the soul that flitters and flies away like a dream, of the spirits 
 that go gibbering beneath the earth like thin smoke. This 
 thing of wandering uncertain motion, when it appears to a 
 mortal in a dream, is like unto the departed in all things as to 
 bulk, voice, and eyes ; it is an eidolon, the perfect image of 
 the lost friend, but unembraceable by human arms, a weak 
 and lamentable shadow. The "thumos" and the "phrenes"- 
 the passionate vigour of earth life, and the capacity of the 
 mind for earthly affairs, are both fled. The former element, 
 in one instance, is described as renewed in Hades ; but the 
 " psyche " is the inherent unquenchable part that escapes and 
 clothes itself in the phantom image of the body, the flitting 
 emanational form. The Homeric psychology bears every 
 evidence of being based upon traditions of visions of ghosts. 
 Granted that there are appearances of ghosts, they are mani- 
 festly in such apparition remote from their own plane of life 
 and dependent for their manifestation upon such thin tissue 
 of material elements as they can attract to themselves. At 
 least, the world's ghost traditions would favour such an idea, 
 and the departed spirit of the Homeric bible is marvellously 
 like those traditions. A belief is found in Homer and else- 
 where that the presence of newly spilled blood will enable the 
 shade to accrete to itself sufficient physical emanations or 
 particles to enable it to speak. The presence of this piece 
 of occultism in Homer rather tends to prove what we have 
 advanced, that the departed soul is regarded there from the 
 side he is supposed to present when pressing into the confines 
 of matter, rather than from the side he might present to a seer 
 who lived more or less in two worlds at once. 
 
 There is much that is instructive in the Homeric belief. 
 Tiresias, who in life had been a prophet and necromancer, the 
 infallible oracle of Greece, according to tradition, at the time 
 of the Theban war, is invoked by Odysseus. This well- 
 accustomed inhabitant of Hades seems to know his way
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 197 
 
 about better than the inconstant, unsettled shades ; he stands 
 firm, and holds a sceptre in his hand, and has rather increased 
 than diminished his knowledge. He tells Odysseus of things 
 which are to come, which he sees in decrees of the gods that 
 have not yet consummated themselves in the sphere of earth. 
 He gives Odysseus a hint also that, if he would commune 
 with a shade, he must not grudge his approach to the sacri- 
 ficial blood ; for, if this be suffered, it will enable truthful 
 communication to be made ; the spirit otherwise, it is to be 
 presumed, being betwixt two worlds, powerless to act, and 
 inclined only to return to his own. But even the departed 
 soothsayer is represented as speaking of the realm of the 
 dead as a joyless region ; and the mother of Odysseus, who 
 converses with him afterwards, expresses wonder at his having 
 been able to come under the shadowy darkness, being alive, 
 and warns him how difficult it is for the living to behold such 
 things. The mother, being in Hades, seems to imagine that 
 her son has come there to speak to her, and appears not to 
 know that she has drawn nigh to him, rather than he to her. 
 She shows intimate knowledge of what has taken place in 
 her son's family, and looks back upon her own " sweet life " 
 which has passed from her. In Hades, she tells her son, the 
 fibrous nerves exist without flesh and bones, which are sub- 
 dued, as it were, by a force of consuming fire. 
 
 There are four distinct aspects given of other-world life. 
 There are Tartarus, the place of torment ; Erebus or Hades, 
 the place of gloom, from which the spirits speak as just 
 described ; the Elysian plains, or abodes of bliss ; and the 
 anomalous wold where wander the hapless wraiths of the 
 unburied. Where the body was neither buried nor burned, 
 it would seem either that some tie was held to bind the shade 
 to wanderings on the confines of earth, or that until sepulture 
 was accomplished, some element was lacking which, if it did 
 not bring joy to the querulous and injurious shade, at least 
 allowed its entrance into companionship with others, and its
 
 198 7 HE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 adoption of a settled existence. If we endeavour to pene- 
 trate to the philosophy of so obscure a matter, we may 
 perhaps infer that, as the burning, or other reduction to 
 gaseous elements, of articles of food was regarded as affording 
 sustenance to parents passed among the shades, according to 
 the rites of ancestor worship, so a similar resolution of a man's 
 dismantled tenement of flesh might be supposed to provide 
 him with some kind of corresponding absorption of the freed 
 spirit of matter, and so with a more perfected establishment 
 of his Hadean form. 
 
 The Homeric psychology gives to the living man two 
 separate attributes the mind in which he may desire to act, 
 and the physical machinery of limbs which, if languid from 
 overstress of labour, may refuse the bidding of the mind. 
 Furthermore, in that mind there is a person's own perception, 
 and also a faculty to or in which the deity suggests things. 
 To this faculty comes prophecy or the divine communication 
 of the immortals. A son of the King of Troy perceives in his 
 mind the counsel which seemed good to the immortals when 
 deliberating, and proclaims it as their voice. Heroes are 
 represented as opened to a possession of this gift, just before 
 they die, when the soul flies from their members bewailing its 
 lot and relinquishing manliness and youth. 
 
 All the Homeric conceptions of the other world are not 
 quite so dreary. Sleep, when lauded for its sweetness, is in the 
 same breath described as so being nearest like death, and death 
 and sleep are regarded as twin brothers. Though even the 
 gods are represented as holding in loathing the squalid 
 domains of the nether world, yet the picture of Achilles 
 taking mighty strides through the meadow of Asphodel, in. 
 joyousness, is not a very grievous one. But it must be 
 allowed that his joy is drawn from earth, because he has been 
 told that his son is very illustrious. It is difficult to judge 
 whether the after-death existence was ever regarded as 
 identical in quality with immortal life. The favourite of
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 199 
 
 a deity might be put through a process which would endow 
 him with immortal strength and invulnerability ; but it is not 
 clear whether it was held that his veins would then run with 
 the celestial ichor instead of blood, and that he would thence- 
 forward be one of those that neither eat bread nor drink 
 purple wine ; or, indeed, whether after death he would be of 
 the immortal race and not a vacillating shade. All we are 
 told of the relation of immortal gods and earth-walking men 
 is that they are in no wise similar ; while at the same time 
 an Olympian deity comes among men like a phantom, 
 and a hero's wraith appears to his friend with recognizable 
 characteristics, even to the beauty of his eyes. 
 
 The Elysian fields, evidently derived as to their name and 
 quality from the flower-growing field of Aalu, of the Egyptian 
 scriptures, are difficult to find, as good places often are. 
 Perhaps for there are diverse suggestions that delightful 
 region is situated in mid air, or in the moon or sun, or in the 
 centre of the earth, or in the blessed islands far away. It 
 was the place for mortals who did not die, heroes who some- 
 how passed away and found themselves in those blessed 
 plains on the boundaries of the earth. There dwelt Rhada- 
 manthos of auburn hair (another Egyptian importation, Rhot- 
 amenti, judge of the Amenti, the unseen or Hades), and there 
 was the most easy life for men. There was there neither 
 snow nor dreary winter, nor falling rain ; but from the im- 
 measurable ocean stream came ever gently blowing breezes 
 of the west wind, potent to refresh. 
 
 This region is curiously like the Olympian home of the 
 gods, but it does not appear to have been identified with it. 
 That stable seat is described as shaken by no blast, nor ever 
 bedewed by rain or approached by snow ; but a cloudless 
 serenity overspread it, and therein the blessed gods were 
 delighted all their days. With them, however, as with us, the 
 scene changes somewhat according to the quality of their 
 mood. Perhaps the truest conception of the other world may
 
 200 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 be found in the Homeric proverb that " the deity ever brings 
 the like to the like." 
 
 Dreams being regarded as bodeful, there is manifestly in 
 and through them an opening into the world whence come 
 prophetic thoughts and foresight and oracular wisdom. 
 Dreams, according to Homeric fancy, afterwards elaborated 
 by Virgil, constitute a double portal ; the one is of horn, the 
 other of ivory. Through the latter come fanciful and de- 
 ceptive things, promises vague and not to be fulfilled. 
 Through the gate of horn come forth to men dreams that 
 accomplish what is true, whenever any one of mortals sees 
 them. It has been suggested that ivory represents the teeth, 
 and horn the substance of the cornea or membrane of the 
 eyeball. The theory is plausible, inasmuch as what man sees 
 he generally relies upon, while what he has by hearsay, or 
 through the teeth of others, is not seldom deceptive. But to 
 render thus is to destroy the poetry of the portals of dream, 
 and in fact to abase them from their mysterious altitude and 
 bring them down to being not dreams at all. 
 
 It is not unreasonable that the Homeric tradition, with 
 the simple vigour of natural life that is displayed in its 
 majestic ballads, the gallant heroism, the brave resignation of 
 the characters, should have kept hold on the attention of 
 the civilized world. If the spiritual pictures are somewhat 
 childish or confused, we must bear in mind that we are look- 
 ing on the work of a poet, not of a prophet ; and further- 
 more, that no nation whatever has yet adopted an absolutely 
 unimpeachable and consistent ethical and psychological 
 system. 
 
 II. 
 
 Greece began her literary history by importation of foreign 
 letters and alien lore. After Phoenicia, India and Egypt had 
 contributed their stores, a long line of priestly mystics held the
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 201 
 
 keys, and the oracles united the soul of the seeker after 
 wisdom not only with heavenly inspiration, but with that 
 earthly leaven of superstition which, when in excess, becomes 
 corrosive rather than expansive in its effects upon spiritual life. 
 
 Great wars united clans, and gave tribes a sense of 
 nationality ; experience outside the narrow homestead fos- 
 tered hardihood and enterprise. Colonies were founded, and 
 rude barbaric individualism, grown out of the quasi-bon- 
 dage of the old family government, learned to act its part as 
 a factor in extensive popular movements. Homer gathers 
 up the traditions of a time when barbarism and civilization 
 mingled, when petty polytheistic superstitions went side by 
 side with a not ignoble consciousness of the divine govern- 
 ment of the world. From beyond the plane of the trifling 
 potentates of Olympos, came glimpses of a power that saw 
 and knew all things, and directed the aim of events, however 
 apparently crooked in progress, to some foreseen goal ; and 
 however much Titanic nature-forces or rebel elements might 
 wax turbulent and destructive, a nod of the supreme father 
 of gods and men meant something altogether irrevocable, and 
 absolutely certain to be fulfilled. 
 
 Within the Homeric university of ballads are gathered, 
 too, the current ethics, morals, and proverbial worldly wisdom 
 of the age. 
 
 The interval between Homer and Hesiod is brief as 
 regards time, being but a century, or thereabouts ; it is, 
 however, wide as regards character. And yet amid the 
 Homeric revel of naturalism there are to be found here and 
 there touches that strike the peculiar religious note of Hesiod. 
 " On account of their pernicious belly men take on grievous 
 cares," we find it said in the Odyssey. " It is arduous indeed 
 to redeem the race and offspring of man," says the Iliad. In 
 Hesiod's verses the Muses address men contemptuously as 
 mere slaves of the belly, who are even unfitted to have truth 
 conveyed to them.
 
 202 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 In the ideals Hesiod presents, we have neither the rude 
 warlike vigour of the Homeric pattern, nor the basking, fawn- 
 like carelessness of enjoyment that is wont to be regarded as 
 the essential principle of Greek life. Hesiod is a religious 
 man, equally painstaking in morals and agriculture. He may 
 have been both farmer and priest, as many monkish com- 
 munities have been in our own England. It is not unlikely, 
 moreover, that more than one hand is responsible for the 
 Hesiodic poems, seeing how different are the principal works 
 that bear his name the " Theogony," or birth legends of the 
 gods, and the " Works and Days." The former is a rather 
 reckless up-gathering of fables, by a careless poet who is apt 
 to let the exigencies of metre decide for him questions of 
 precedence, and makes his disposition in a manner at times 
 resembling that of a child arranging a garland of wild flowers. 
 Through the false dignity of age, which made them even less 
 indicative of any original purport or inner meaning than they 
 had been when their only partially apprehensive collector put 
 them together, these fables, when systematized, became 
 exalted and crystallized into a sort of doctrinal orthodoxy of 
 polytheism ; and being thus popularly regarded, they in course 
 of time constituted a stumbling block to the more enlightened 
 religious mind of Greece. " Plato deprecated and Xenophanes 
 denounced " them. They contain noble beauties, and much 
 theistic and ethical suggestiveness ; but we should be very 
 sorry to have to accept them in mass as containing all things 
 " generally necessary to salvation." 
 
 Pythagoras was believed to have led the way in this con- 
 tempt for romance-making about the forces and foibles of 
 anthropomorphic deity. Diogenes Laertius cites the story of 
 another writer to the effect that when Pythagoras descended 
 to the shades below, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound to a 
 pillar of brass, and howling in torture, and that of Homer 
 suspended from a tree, environed with serpents, as a punish- 
 ment for their assertions about the gods.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 203 
 
 Very different from the "Theogony" is the "Works and 
 Days," which contains a very simple and real morality, a high 
 sense of religion, and some small superstition. 
 
 Hesiod's inspiration is poetical but not unspiritual. When 
 he speaks of the Muses, it is not as of abstractions that may 
 fitly adorn verse ; it is as of actual presences, who are in close 
 relation with the man who will give them heed. 
 
 There is poetry about the Muses when they are pictured 
 as guarding the sacred mount of Helicon, dancing nimbly 
 with delicate, dainty feet in their choral ring around the violet- 
 hued fount of Aganippe, or bathing their soft skins in the 
 delicious spring of Hippocrene (Steed fount), which the mystic 
 horse Pegasus was fabled to have evoked by a stamp of his 
 magical hoof. 
 
 There is a spiritual reality in the conception of the Muses 
 when we are taught that, so soon as air's deep mist shrouds 
 them, and night makes covert, they sing sweet sounds and 
 draw nigh to earth, to visit such mortals as are pure. In 
 earlier ages the heaven-dwellers were deemed to have often 
 held commune with men, and in open day ; but in the more 
 worldly age they only came softly at night to a poetic soul or 
 to a lonely prophet here and there. 
 
 Hesiod claimed to have learned a lovely song, as he fed 
 his lambs beneath the sacred hill ; and he dreamed that the 
 Muses addressed him with some such myth as this : 
 
 " Shepherds that tend the field folds, coward knaves, 
 Mere glutton hungers ! we know how to tell 
 Full many a fiction put in truthful guise, 
 Yet know, at our good choice, how to place truth 
 In hidden forms of fable." 
 
 Hesiod hailed gladly the eloquent damsels of the mystic 
 world, who gave him a wonderful verdant rod, a staff of 
 luxuriant laurel, whose leaves he might chew ; and imparted 
 to him, by inbreathing, the gift of the divine voice, that he 
 might sing of things to be as well as of things gone by.
 
 204 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 These gifts were the simple apparatus and the faculties of the 
 oracle. 
 
 Certain of the ancient writers ridiculed Hesiod for these 
 spiritual communings ; and modern commentators write 
 scornfully of his gift of openness to the visitants whom 
 he regarded as the Muses : " Hesiod's simple nature may 
 have dreamed these visions, or have been wrought on by 
 fancy, the Muse-haunted spot, and the plenteous laurel, their 
 gift." But Hesiod has the belief of the old oracular mystics, 
 and unless every form of faith in the contact of a supernal 
 world with the borders of our own is pestilent moonshine, his 
 laurel-chewing meant some method of dulling or quieting the 
 external senses, and his openness to visions was something 
 more than idle fancy acting on a too simple and credulous 
 nature. At least he deserves whatever respect may be due 
 to Buddhist adept or Hebrew seer. But whatever criticism 
 the theory of inspiration may meet with, the gift of poetical 
 genius, and its power to open men's eyes to visions of life 
 that transcend our world of every day, has never been 
 analyzed to its source. What a cruel mockery, explicable 
 only on the most pessimistic theory possible, is this image- 
 forming faculty, if the images be all baseless phantoms ! 
 The imaginative faculty seizes upon the fleeting visions of 
 the seer, and works them into form with the manifest object 
 of impressing man with the faith that the world he inhabits 
 is not the all in all, but a region traversed by pathways of 
 light that carry faint rays from a more wonderful unseen. 
 
 Granted that such suggestions as these be true, to the 
 generality of us who dwell within an envelope sorely undiapha- 
 nous, they nevertheless seem difficult to catch hold of; and 
 we have to be thankful to the poets who can bring them 
 nearer home to our senses by the aid of pure art, and an 
 appeal to that romantic element which still abides deep down 
 in our nature, and perchance is a relic of some Eden-realm 
 whence we have strayed.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 205 
 
 The poetry of Hesiod is not ruined in its artistic attributes 
 by didacticism, but interspersed with it. " Poetical genius " 
 in Hesiod, says O. K. Miiller, is regarded as "a free gift of 
 the Muses, imparted to a rough unlettered man, and awaken- 
 ing him from his brutish condition to a better life. . . . This 
 gift of the Muses is to be dedicated to the diffusion of truth." 
 
 In judging of the theism of Hesiod we must, as in the 
 case of Homer, accept the fact that the many gods are not 
 God, as we understand the word, but are manifestations or 
 servants of his. Some are high daimonic influences, inter- 
 mediate beings forming a vast hierarchy of life between 
 ourselves and the Supreme. Step by step does the ladder 
 extend from the true wielder of fate, through Olympian 
 deities, demigods, muses and heroes, down to man. 
 
 Of the Homeric Zeus Sir G. W. Cox (" Manual of Mytho- 
 logy ") says, he " is described in ways so different that we 
 should rather say that there were two gods called by that 
 name. Sometimes he is represented as partial, unjust, fond 
 of rest and pleasure, changeable in his affections, and 
 unfaithful in his love, greedy, sensual, and impure. But 
 in hours of real trouble and grief, Achilles and the other 
 Achaians pray to a Zeus who is not only irresistible in 
 might, but also just and righteous." " How," the question 
 is asked, " is this contrast to be accounted for ? " " As 
 the Indian word Dyaus seems originally to have been 
 a name for the One only God, so it was retained by the 
 Greeks and other kindred peoples to express all that they felt 
 towards God. But, as the word also meant the visible sky 
 with its clouds and vapours, some of the phrases which 
 described its changes came, when their meaning was forgotten, 
 to denote shameful actions. Thus the earth had been spoken 
 of as the bride of the sky, and the sky was said to over- 
 shadow the earth with his love in every land ; and all this, 
 when applied to a deity with human form and passions, grew 
 up into strange stories of lawless licence." " While in Hesiod,"
 
 206 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 says the same writer, " the descent of the gods, their earthly 
 loves, and their gross actions are brought out even more 
 prominently, yet the poet can turn sharply away from all such 
 things to the thought of that pure and holy Zeus who looks 
 down from heaven to see if men will do justice and seek after 
 God." " How," he asks, " was this contrast felt by the poets 
 and philosophers of a still later age ? By some the thought 
 that the gods must be good was regarded as a sufficient 
 reason for disbelieving all stories to their discredit ; by others 
 these tales were considered to disprove their divinity, as 
 Euripides said " If the gods do aught unseemly, then they 
 are not gods at all." But others rested content with the 
 knowledge that Zeus was a mere name by which they might 
 speak of him in whom we live and move and have our being ; 
 but which is utterly unable to express, as our mind is to 
 conceive, his infinite perfection." 
 
 From Hesiod may be drawn instances of exceedingly 
 diverse conceptions of Zeus and of deity. We have the 
 naturalistic use of the name, showing the Sanskrit Dyaus, 
 the firmament, still to linger in it. In early spring, " let Zeus 
 rain three days, and not cease, in measure neither exceeding 
 nor falling short of the depth of the hoof-print of your ox," 
 and a late sower may reap a plenteous harvest. In winter, 
 " haul ashore your ship, and cover it thick with stones on 
 every side, to keep off the violence of wet-blowing winds . . . 
 that the rain of Zeus may not rot it." 
 
 In the following, Zeus represents a partaker in elemental 
 strife, the mightiest factor in a very materialistic chaos. We 
 roughly translate : 
 
 " No longer then did Zeus 
 Suppress his power, but in his soul at once 
 There rose expansive force ; and putting out 
 His fullest strength, he then stepped forth, from heaven 
 And from Olympus lightning ceaselessly : 
 Forth from his sturdy hand the bolts outflew 
 Thick with thunder and flash, making a whirl
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 207 
 
 Of sacred flame, no rift between the showers. 
 
 On every side life-giving earth on fire 
 
 Put forth a roaring, while with mighty flame 
 
 Huge forests crackled. All the land did boil, 
 
 And Ocean's streams, yea and the desert sea. 
 
 Round and around the Titans, earthly born, 
 
 Hot vapour circled, the incessant blaze 
 
 Streamed up to swathe the atmosphere divine, 
 
 Whilst flashing sheen of bolt and lightning's flame 
 
 Blasted their eyes in spite of all their power. 
 
 The preternatural burning fixed its hold 
 
 On Chaos' depths, and to the eye and ear, 
 
 So far as sense could grasp, it suchwise seemed 
 
 As if the earth and firmament so wide 
 
 Met hurtling in mid air, for such a crash 
 
 Might only come of ruined nether earth 
 
 Borne down beneath wrecked heaven's supremacy." 
 
 Zeus triumphs by his immortal faculty over his father 
 Cronos (afterwards identified with Chronos, Time), and claims 
 fealty from the elements his servants. The notion of a divine 
 rule and order superior to aught else, and reducing all else 
 to an obedient harmony, is here foreshadowed. 
 
 Then, again, we find the personal Zeus the member of a 
 family of deities, generally outwitting the rest, and ruling by 
 a very human kind of superiority. 
 
 But the same Zeus is capable of being deceived, though 
 as it is lamely argued he was not really cheated, but only 
 sought an excuse for his contemplated severity to men. 
 When gods and mortals were contending, Prometheus laid 
 a trap for Zeus by asking him to choose between two divisions 
 of a slain ox. On the one hand was good flesh covered up 
 by offal, on the other the bones subtly disposed beneath white 
 fat. Zeus reproaches Prometheus for the unfairness of the 
 division, but is asked, nevertheless, to choose whichever por- 
 tion the better suits his inclination : 
 
 " Musing deceit he spake ; nor did Zeus fail, 
 Of counsel incorruptible, the fraud 
 To know and grasp ; and in his inmost thought
 
 208 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Much evil he foredoomed to mortal man 
 
 Which time should bring to pass. With both his hands 
 
 The white fat he upraised from earth. Then wrath 
 
 Possessed him ; yea, his very soul was wroth, 
 
 When laid with cunning artifice he saw 
 
 The whitening bones. Thenceforth the tribes of earth 
 
 Consume such whitening bones, when the smoke climbs 
 
 Wreathed from their fragrant altars. Then again 
 
 Cloud-gatherer Zeus with indignation spake : 
 
 ' Son of lapetus, most deeply versed 
 
 In counsels, dost thou then remember yet 
 
 Thine arts delusive ? So to wrath incensed, 
 
 Spake he of wisdom incorruptible ; 
 
 And still the fraud remembering, from that hour 
 
 The strength of unexhausted fire denied 
 
 To all Earth's denizens. But none the less 
 
 Benevolent Prometheus baffled him ; 
 
 The far-seen splendour, in a hollow reed 
 
 He stole, of quenchless flame. But thereupon 
 
 Resentment stung the Thunderer's inmost soul ; 
 
 And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw 
 
 The fire far-gleaming in the midst of men. 
 
 Swift, for that flame, devised he ill to man." 
 
 Finally, we may turn to a picture of a Zeus who has 
 Justice for a daughter, and is the watchful father of all men : 
 
 " Ye judging kings, ponder for your own selves 
 This Nemesis, for close at hand within 
 Men's borders are immortals who declare 
 How many one another waste and grind 
 By crooked laws, aloof from all regard 
 To the god's retribution. For there dwell 
 On many-nurturing earth ten thousand told 
 Thrice over of immortals Zeus ordained 
 For watchful guardians over mortal men. 
 These, be ye sure, maintain within their charge 
 Both upright judgments and injurious deeds, 
 As clad in air they walk earth every way. 
 Yea more, there is the maiden Justice, sprung 
 From Zeus himself, noble and reverend held 
 Before the gods who in Olympus dwell. 
 Whenever any wight brings wrong on her 
 By crookt disparagement, she takes her seat 
 Forthwith by father Zeus, old Cronos' son,
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 209 
 
 And cries out on the impious mind of men, 
 
 So that the people's body may atone 
 
 For kings' infatuate deeds, who by their schemes 
 
 Pernicious twist the judgments from their path 
 
 By crookt forthtellings. O ye kings of law, 
 
 Guard ye against these things, make straight and fair 
 
 What words your mouth delivers, hungry maw, 
 
 For bribes ; and put warped judgments out of sight. 
 
 He harms himself who plans another's harm, 
 
 And evil counsel serves its author worst. 
 
 The eye of Zeus that sees all and perceives, 
 
 Yea now, if so he will, these things regards, 
 
 Nor him escapes the nature of this justice, 
 
 Whatever kind a city's walls enclose." 
 
 The proverb in the above, which reminds us of the truth, 
 " They that take the sword shall perish by sword," is repeated 
 in another form as, " If you have spoken ill, haply you will 
 yourself hear worse." 
 
 The most valuable .part of Hesiod, from a philosophical 
 point of view, lies in those deeper words of his where he 
 manifests a monotheistic tendency, and in the ethical sentences 
 which he intersperses through his works, and especially en- 
 shrines in the " Works and Days." 
 
 The following might be found under the name of a Hebrew 
 prophet : 
 
 " With ease he maketh strong, with equal ease 
 The strong abaseth ; the illustrious 
 He minisheth, and him that is obscure 
 He raiseth up ; yea, more, great Zeus, who wields 
 High thunders and in mansions dwells above, 
 With ease makes straight the crookt, and blasts the proud. 
 Hear and behold and heed, and righteously 
 Make straight the way of oracles of God." 
 
 Here again is the old honest faith that our hearts so deeply 
 cling to, our lives so oft ignore : 
 
 " 'Tis plainly in thy power to make thy choice 
 Of evil, yea abundantly, with ease ; 
 For smooth the way, and lying close at hand. 
 But virtue's road the deathless gods did set 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 With toilsome sweat for entrance ; long and steep 
 And rugged at the outset is the track 
 That leads thereto, but when the peak is gained, 
 'Tis thence of ease, however harsh before." 
 
 Of this passage Cicero said, " Our dear Lepta must learn 
 Hesiod, and have by heart ' The gods have placed at virtue's 
 threshold the sweat of the brow.' " 
 
 The following comparison of the original and earnest 
 thinker, the conventionally good, and the utterly careless, is 
 of high interest, and evidences an advanced state of mental 
 and moral development : 
 
 " Best every way is he who brings his mind 
 To bear on all things for himself, and broods 
 On what were best for after and the end ; 
 He too is good, who yields to good advice ; 
 But when a man thinks neither for himself, 
 Nor takes into his heart another's word, 
 Far else it is, a worthless fellow he." 
 
 The following contains much of a sort of trite proverbial 
 wisdom : 
 
 " Both gods and men are rightly wroth with him 
 Who lives a sluggard's life, like stingless drones 
 Whose temper is to lazily consume 
 The meat the bees' toil wins ; thy pleasure be 
 To set in order works of seemliness, 
 To fill thy barns with seasonable store. 
 Through work, men gain increase of flocks and wealth ; 
 Toil thou, thou shall be dearer thus by far 
 To deathless ones, yea, and to mortals too, 
 For sluggards meet with an exceeding hate. 
 Work is disgrace no whit, 'tis idleness 
 That is reproach. . . . An evil kind of shame 
 Attends the needy man shame which is found 
 To be great aid or injury to men. 
 Shame verily haunts wretchedness, but near 
 Prosperity dwells confidence. But mark, 
 Goods must not be to evil rapine owed ; 
 But what the gods give, these are far the best. 
 If with his very hands, by violence,
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 211 
 
 One shall have seized great wealth, or by his tongue 
 Shall have made prize of it, as happens oft, 
 So soon as gain beguiles the mind of men, 
 And shamelessness comes suddenly on shame, 
 Then easily the gods make him obscure ; 
 Unto that man his house is brought to nought, 
 And no long time his wealth his comrade bides." 
 
 Hesiod does not rise, it will be seen from the following, to 
 Christianity ; or rather, lest we wrong him, and to speak more 
 exactly, he does not reach the level of the teachings and life 
 that formed the original basis of what was afterwards turned 
 into conventional Christianity : 
 
 " Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, 
 Thine enemy leave alone ; especially 
 Ask to thy board the man that dwells near by, 
 For at thy house if any trouble hap, 
 Neighbours stay not to gird, but come forthwith, 
 While kinsfolk might delay for travelling gear." 
 
 This is simple and not unwholesome worldly wisdom, 
 and takes us into a careful country life, where no imperial 
 centralization overshadowed the self-protecting villagers. 
 
 A curious custom is shown, which was also common among 
 the Hebrews, that of a feast to which each guest brought his 
 own quota of provision : " Be not uncourteous in a feast of 
 many guests, where the arrangement is of a contribution from 
 all ; for the pleasure then is greatest, the expense least." The 
 observation marks an early time very different from the pro- 
 fuse modern style, which must add a spare set of best rooms 
 to a house to be ready for guests, and holds in readiness ever 
 a more than common provision of food and apparatus for 
 them. The Homeric visitor not seldom slept, covered by 
 some wild beast's skin, in the porch. In Hesiod's day there 
 was no doubt great pleasure in the feast, when all were free 
 and equal contributors, and no host or hostess was kept 
 anxious by responsibility for the whole. With the rudeness 
 of primitive style, perhaps has been lost some of its gaiety.
 
 212 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Again we find the note struck that reminds us inversely 
 of the Sermon on the Mount : 
 
 " Love him that loves thee, draw thou nigh to him 
 That draweth nigh to thee ; to him that gives 
 Give thou ; to him that gives not give not thou. 
 To givers some give, to withholders none." 
 
 In the following is a curious mixture of high morals with 
 worldly wisdom : 
 
 " Measure right well in borrowing from a neighbour, 
 And duly pay him back on the same scale, 
 Or better, if thou canst, so if in want 
 In future days thou mayest find in him 
 One to depend on. Gain thou not base gains. 
 Gains that are base are equal to a loss." 
 
 Though Hesiod's simple morality and religion speaks for 
 itself in its evidently genuine character ; yet we must allow 
 for a certain amount of personal prejudice in him, which pre- 
 vents his being, like Homer, a gleaming mirror of the notions 
 of life of his time. Hesiod appears to have been wronged by 
 a brother, and by means of the bribery of the judges who tried 
 the cause. Though he afterwards befriended this brother 
 when he came to him in want, yet we see a slight tinge of 
 gloom, scarcely deep enough to be called morbidness or pes- 
 simism, overshadowing his reflections. By K. O. Mu'ller he is 
 thus compared with Homer : In Hesiod " we miss the power- 
 ful sway of a youthful fancy, which in every part of the poems 
 of Homer sheds an expression of bright and inexhaustible 
 enjoyment, which lights up the sublime images of a heroic 
 age, and moulds them into forms of surpassing beauty. The 
 abandonment of the thoughts, with heartfelt joy and satisfac- 
 tion, to a flow of poetical images, such as came crowding on 
 the mind of Homer how different is this from the manner of 
 Hesiod ! His poetry appears to struggle, to emerge out of 
 the narrow bounds of common life, which he strives to ennoble 
 and to render more endurable. Regarding with a melancholy
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 213 
 
 feeling the destiny of the human race, and the corruption of a 
 social condition which has destroyed all serene enjoyment, the 
 poet seeks either to disseminate knowledge by which life can 
 be improved or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the 
 influence of a superior destiny, which may tend to produce a 
 patient resignation to its inevitable evils. At one time he 
 gives us lessons of civil and domestic wisdom, whereby order 
 may be restored to a disturbed commonwealth or an ill- 
 regulated household ; at another, he seeks to reduce the 
 bewildering and endless variety of stories about the gods to 
 a connected system, in which each deity has his appointed 
 place. Then, again, the poet of this school seeks to distribute 
 the heroic legends into large masses, and, by finding certain 
 links which may bind them all together, to make them more 
 clear and comprehensive." 
 
 In the cosmogony of Hesiod, to which, where the inclina- 
 tion is towards pantheism, we have to look for the scheme 
 of theology, there is occasional suggestiveness, but more 
 confusion. Some of the stories are badly arranged, as if 
 incorrectly handed down from some earlier original. 
 
 The Hesiodic conception of life strongly recalls alike the 
 Hebrew and the Aryan sacred writings. There is a notion of 
 a lower or fallen state, and of a pre-existent and superior con- 
 dition. There are golden and silver ages of innocence, the 
 origin of which, with that of other legends of Eden or Elysium, 
 we may take the hint from the Rabbis of tracing to remi- 
 niscences of seers of a pre-corporeal or spiritual state, or to 
 conditions of "open vision" affecting the present existence 
 with some glimmering consciousness of that higher plane 
 which is to most men as a far-away dream. 
 
 The beings representing life of the order described as the 
 Golden Age die easily, as those would to whom death was 
 only a passage from one state to another. As Hesiod most 
 suggestively expresses it, "they used to die as if subdued 
 by sleep." And after they had pleasantly passed away
 
 214 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 from earth, in the manner, as expressed by a modern poet, 
 of one 
 
 " Who sinks to rest 
 Like a tired child upon his nurse's breast," 
 
 they dwelt near it " kindly haunting earth, spiritual guardians 
 of mortal men . . . wrapping themselves in air," with the 
 kingly functions of watching over justice and conferring wealth 
 and honour upon men. 
 
 While on earth they had lived as gods, with a life void of 
 care and free from labours and troubles. All good things 
 were theirs, and the land yielded up its fruits spontaneously 
 for them to gather in quietness. They did not give way to 
 quarrels and competitive strife, as is the way of mankind ; all 
 blessings were theirs ; they were in harmony with the gods. 
 What a strange dream this for men to have had if evolution 
 be true ! It could only have found its way from dreamland, 
 or from some hidden paradise. On this everyday earth of 
 ours we find no traces of a time 
 
 " When every brute 
 
 Had voice articulate, in speech was skilled, 
 And the mid-forests with its synods filled. 
 The tongues of rock and pine-leaf then were free ; 
 To ship and sailor then would speak the sea ; 
 Sparrows with farmers would shrewd talk maintain ; 
 Earth gave all fruits, nor asked for toil again. 
 Mortals and gods were wont to mix as friends." 
 
 The picture is essentially the same as the prophet's vision 
 of a future, when 
 
 " The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 And the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; 
 And the calf and the young lion and the fading together j 
 And a little child shall lead them. 
 And the cow and the bear shall feed ; 
 Their young ones shall lie down together ; 
 And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 
 The suckling child also shall play on the hole of the asp,
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 215 
 
 And the weaned child shall put his hand on the viper's den. 
 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : 
 For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, 
 As the waters cover the sea " (Isaiah xi. 6-9.) 
 
 We must not despise these seemingly so illusive dreams 
 of a harmony of man with deity, and of the consequent pacifi- 
 cation of subordinate nature ; they imply an aspiration in man 
 which is at present unrealized, and, implying that, argue also 
 the existence of a faculty which is either rudimentary or 
 obscured. 
 
 By a weaklier race those of the golden age are succeeded. 
 The link between earth and heaven would seem to have become 
 precarious, and the mortals of the silver age, while they have 
 lost the secret of spiritual strength, yet have not learned the 
 rude strength and vigour of a lower earth life, dissociated 
 from the angelic worlds. They are poor weak creatures, of a 
 prolonged infancy and a brief imprudent manhood, and the 
 earth meetly takes them into her bosom, to become the 
 "blessed mortals" of the under- world. 
 
 The third and brazen race suits the earth right well ; they 
 have no troubling dreams. They do not eat wheaten food 
 only, but have turned to flesh also.* They are a sturdy set, 
 but, earth-born, they fight with one another, and, subdued by 
 one another's hands, pass out of the bright sunshine into a 
 squalid, chilling, inglorious Hades. 
 
 Then succeeds upon earth a hero race, half divine ; but 
 they perish in great wars ; they are given life and settle- 
 ments in the Isles of the Blest, apart from men, and yet not 
 with the true immortals. Then Hesiod bemoans himself that 
 he had not at least died among these, or been born in the 
 remote afterward, instead of mingling with the race of iron, 
 which, with a touch of personal experience, he says will never 
 cease from toil and wretchedness, albeit some good shall be 
 
 * This notion of a progress towards earthliness, marked by increasing gross- 
 ness of food, is more fully manifested in the Parsi scriptures.
 
 216 THE FATHERS OF JESUS, 
 
 mingled with their ills. These are men such as history tells 
 of ; and their perversities, which are so many, there is no need 
 to recount, for we know the men of this age not by hearsay 
 only. 
 
 The theogony of Hesiod, says Paley, " might seem to con- 
 tain traces of what appear to be primitive and nearly universal 
 traditions of the human family ; obscure reminiscences relating 
 to the creation of the world, to ancient races which had long 
 passed away, and generally to a state of mankind higher, more 
 godlike, more exempt from sin and toil, such as we used to 
 contemplate man when first placed on the earth, as repre- 
 sented in the Mosaic accounts." The opposition to the con- 
 clusion that the theogony of the Greeks was derived from 
 either the Persians or the Indians, or from Egypt, is also 
 referred to, while it is urged that it was " an Hellenic develop- 
 ment of the same common traditions, traditions so immensely 
 ancient, that all traces of anything like a history of them had 
 long before Hesiod's time been utterly and irretrievably lost. 
 The coincidences between the earliest known traditions of 
 mankind and the Mosaic writings are much too numerous and 
 important to be purely accidental, and much too widely dis- 
 persed to have been borrowed solely from that source." This 
 was written in 1860, and since that time the great discoveries 
 of ancient records have placed beyond doubt the inference 
 that Greek and Hebrew religious traditions alike are in great 
 part fragments of the lore of an earlier epoch. 
 
 Religious aspirations have characterized the hero men of 
 every age of which we have any record. There are among 
 nations cases of arrested development ; degraded races may 
 be found ; perhaps even spheres of humanity representing in 
 some sort an infantine growth ; but, so far as the remotest 
 whisper of history makes itself heard, there has ever been 
 a bearer of the divine torch in the world. Indeed, from what 
 records tell us, it is plain that five to ten thousand years ago 
 there were men living on earth of a spiritual and mental
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 217 
 
 altitude equal at least to our own. And as there are at 
 the present day races of men as low as any of which we can 
 form a conception or have heard of in history, there is a 
 certain reason in the inference that, if traces of very low 
 races be found in the remotest past to which we can reach, 
 there may concurrently have existed also groups occupying 
 a higher plane. 
 
 The study of Hesiod's book of genesis in the light of 
 modern discoveries, affords an enviable example to those who 
 are seeking a solution of their doubts with respect to more 
 modern systems of religion. It is in his case comparatively 
 easy to combine and make fruitful the double process of 
 scientific analysis and poetic rehabilitation. The parted 
 strands into which his webs divide under examination, could 
 be reunited in a solid and beautiful fabric. 
 
 The reason why this is so with the Hesiodic myths is, that 
 their foundation is usually naturalistic. The phenomena of 
 the elements, viewed imaginatively and raised to the heights 
 of poetry, have become deities of the sacred hill, and part and 
 parcel of the group of Olympians. Where the symbolisms of 
 religious myths are not confined to personifications of physical 
 actualities, but represent passages of the occult life of man, the 
 analytic process is infinitely more difficult : and its result is 
 less generally acceptable in a world in which the senses 
 and the external life hold undisputed pre-eminence over, and 
 manifest a strong repulsion towards, any interloping mystery. 
 
 It would be difficult to decide whether it is from legends 
 and symbols of naturalistic or of spiritualistic basis, when 
 degraded or obscured, that the more dangerous superstitions 
 arise. Who shall say which shall the more terrify a child, a 
 story of Furies, Gorgons, and Harpies, or a story of an ever- 
 lasting brimstone sea of hell ? As the child grows into a man, 
 certainly the bogies that resolve themselves into physical facts 
 are the most easy to face, whilst the uncanny remoteness of 
 the others constitutes their irremovable dread.
 
 2i8 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 A familiar aspect of the physical myth is that in which we 
 see the patent fact of some daily marvel of nature when 
 seized upon by the imagination, and in process of absorption 
 into the poetic mind being met half way by some interior 
 fact of consciousness which seems to delight in entering into 
 correspondence with it. Given, for instance, some physical 
 disturbance, some elemental terror ; and a guilty conscience 
 is most pathetically ready to ally itself with it, to hide in it, as 
 it were ; to clothe itself in the darkness or the storm, as its 
 own appropriate and destined garment. 
 
 We know the truth of the saying, " Every one that doeth 
 evil things hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest 
 his deeds should be convicted." Turning to the Greek 
 mythology, we find a fearful worship given to certain stern 
 and inexorable deities, the Erinyes. Grim and terrible, 
 with winged feminine forms, bearing burning torches and 
 whips of scorpions, and having serpents twining in their hair, 
 they are the ministers of the vengeance of the gods. They 
 punish the guilty alike on earth and in Hades. The people 
 pay them worship, and yet scarcely dare call them by name 
 or gaze on the temples dedicated to them, for their attendants 
 are Terror and Wrath, Pallor and Death, and their subtle 
 influence is to deprive of his crafty reason the manslayer, the 
 perjurer, the undutiful, the cruelly treating, the presumptuous, 
 and to drive the evil man to distraction and fury. From 
 without come the chastisements of these avenging deities, in 
 wars, pestilence, and dissensions ; and from within, in sore 
 stabs of guilty conscience. 
 
 In spite of all these horrors, their name Erinyes was most 
 often left unsaid, and the name Eumenides, or kindly disposed, 
 was given to them, as being venerable goddesses whose anger 
 was just And poets and artists who celebrated their festivals 
 were wont to see that gentler side of them, and so to depict 
 them as beautiful and young. 
 
 What is the original secret of such a two-sided personifica-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 219 
 
 tion, a secret which was apparently unknown to Homer and 
 Hesiod ? And how come these Furies to be so like that con- 
 ception of the terrible convicting light which is hated by evil ? 
 a conception which was expressed in a country that followed 
 a different worship from that of the Eumenides, and which, 
 moreover, must draw so clear a response and verification from 
 general human experience. 
 
 We have to go to India to find a clue that joins the 
 religious with the imaginative conception, and makes of them 
 two aspects given by the conscience of man to a single simple 
 natural truth. The Erinys of the Greek mythology is the 
 Saranyu of the Vedic, a mythical being whose name is an 
 equivalent for the morning light. The swift flash of the dawn 
 comes forth from the grove of gloom, and is the pursuing fury 
 of darkness and evil. The irresistible light is the fury that 
 finds out sin and convicts the sinner. The light is implacable 
 by very justice, and yet is ever beautiful and young to the 
 eye of the righteous poet. The origin is thus made clear 
 of an ideal vengeance that is alike to be feared and to be 
 worshipped, a power lovely and ghastly at once, and that acts 
 with equal sureness from without and from within. The light 
 from without discloses the darkest deed ; what we call light 
 breaks upon the mind from within and probes our most 
 deeply hidden motives. The Furies are ever at our doors. 
 
 " Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, 
 but the blasphemy of the spirit shall not be forgiven " 
 (Matt. xii. 31). 
 
 " Who sins against the light is hurt beyond the hope of 
 cure" ("Works and Days," 281). 
 
 The identity of the Indian Saranyft and the Greek Erinys 
 might be open to question, and the resemblance might be 
 regarded as a mere coincidence, were it the only one between 
 the myths of the Veda and Hesiod. But Eos, the dawn, 
 resembles the Indian Ushas ; Eros, the child Love, is the 
 Indian Arusha, a name for the sun, regarded as a beautiful
 
 220 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 child beginning his course ; Daphne is Dahana, Argynnis 
 Arjuna. Hesiod's fabled monster Echidna, half-nymph, half- 
 serpent, dwelling in a cavern, insensible to age, and giving 
 birth to destruction, finds her prototype in the Indian Ahi, or 
 snake. Her offspring, Orthros, and Kerberos the dog of hell, 
 are similarly represented by the great dragons of the Veda, 
 and powers of darkness, Vritra and Sarvara. The Olympian 
 deity Ares or Mars, the god of war, is presumably akin to the 
 Maruts of the Veda, the gods of the storm-winds, deriving their 
 origin from the root " mar," to grind. 
 
 In a similar way, other mythological heroes of Greece can 
 be traced to their origin in Egypt. Themis, the goddess of 
 justice and mother of judgment and peace and law, is the 
 Egyptian Thmei, or truth, and the Hebrew Thummim, an 
 expression which the Septuagint renders by truth. Rhada- 
 manthus, the mythical ruler on earth and fabled judge of hell, 
 is Rhotamenti in ancient Egypt, the King of the Amenti, or 
 the unseen. The gloom of Erebos is drawn from the associa- 
 tions of the Egyptian with Ereb, the west ; and our Europe 
 shows the same derivation without the accompanying notion 
 of gloom. Hecate is akin to Heka, a name of Isis. Harpo- 
 crates, the deity represented with finger on the mouth, is from 
 Hor-pi-krut, the infant Horus. Kharu, an archaic Egyptian 
 deity, possibly associated with a root signifying silence, 
 appears as Charon, the Greek boatman of the dead, and 
 Acheron, a river of the unseen world. 
 
 Ocean, in the Hesiodean mythology, is more than the 
 deep, the main, or the barren salt sea, which was a separate 
 personification, and was represented as only a child of earth. 
 The deity Okeanos is child both of Earth and of Heaven, 
 a being stretching round earth and constituting its mystic 
 boundary, just as the Egyptian Ur-nas, which makes the 
 great vague water-way from earth to the unseen worlds. 
 
 In these mythological conceptions, a marvel almost 
 beyond analysis is the fusion of a natural fact or physical
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 221 
 
 theory with a spiritual faith. The latter seems sometimes to 
 have expanded beyond the former, and to have used the 
 metaphorical form as a ladder by which to raise itself into 
 a conception appreciable in the world of sense. A materialist 
 might plausibly argue that our whole belief in a world of 
 spirit was but a poetic fancy evolved during long ages from 
 a custom of the Egyptians to bury in the west, to which end 
 they had to cross their river, which hence grew to be the type 
 of an imaginary pathway of the soul into the regions of the 
 unseen. It might even be claimed that from such beginnings, 
 and from such alone, a complete soul-theory had developed 
 itself. But equally well might it be argued that there could 
 be no such faculty as conscience before some poet saw that 
 light frightens darkness, and thencefrom drew a fanciful 
 picture of a pure spiritual element in man before which his 
 lower nature shrinks back abashed. 
 
 Such arguments are difficult to answer save in two ways. 
 One is by the production of antecedent records of man, in 
 which the same old interest and belief in a preternatural 
 world exhibits itself, changed only in the imagery in which it 
 is clothed. The other is by retreat into the stronghold of 
 the very consciousness itself, the fact of whose absolute 
 existence is impugned. That dim spiritual consciousness, 
 ever present and ever active in more or less degree, must, if 
 we grant its existence, be the motive power that is endea- 
 vouring to find expression, and ever clothing itself in the 
 symbols that best represent or enshrine it. Sometimes per- 
 chance the oft-used symbols will lose their outline and become 
 deteriorated by change and misconceptions, while concurrently 
 with the obscuration of their original physical sense, their 
 inner meaning may also have become dull. Nevertheless, 
 in spite of all defects, which perhaps are inherent in the 
 attempted representation of one sphere of life on the plane of 
 another, they may continue expressive of a true idea in a form 
 that man may convey, or pass on, to man.
 
 222 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that a number of poetic 
 personifications, even such as have become included among 
 religious types, and were of the most high and sacred regard, 
 were simply naturalistic in their origin. There is no more 
 reason to doubt this than to doubt the possibility of a crafty 
 man originating such a proverb as " Honesty is the best 
 policy," with the accent on policy, and of this subtle maxim 
 being read by an honest man in a higher sense. 
 
 Among the mythological conceptions of Hesiod that may 
 fairly be deemed simply naturalistic, notwithstanding any 
 poetic apotheosis, may be classed such as that of the Harpies, 
 who accompany the wind-blasts. They are named in Homer, 
 and in later mythologies appear in hideous forms. They are 
 very reasonably taken to be personifications of pestilential 
 breaths that accompany winds blowing from infected quarters. 
 The Graiae, born of a monstrous deity of the sea, and of the 
 abyss, have fair faces and gray hair, and are supposed to 
 represent waves with white crest and grayish spume ; or to 
 personify some effect of the gloaming when light and 
 darkness cross each other. The Gorgons, again, who come 
 from the remote nightward quarter beyond Ocean, with their 
 terrible faces, have been thought to symbolize the huge and 
 fearful ocean rollers which, when driven over a long wide 
 stretch of seas by a hurricane, are enough to inspire even the 
 seafaring man with something like fear. On the other hand, 
 as of these dire sisters one is mortal, the others immortal, the 
 former has been thought to be the sky of a starlit night, which 
 is doomed to vanish and die at sunrise, while the latter repre- 
 sent that remote and absolute darkness which it was supposed 
 the light of the sun could not penetrate, and which might 
 therefore be regarded as impregnable and immortal. 
 
 To judge of symbolic religions we must draw into com- 
 parison with our own times a picture of races unperturbed by 
 the manifold distractions that a complex civilization brings, 
 races of men living by what their hands can draw from
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 223 
 
 the earth, rather than by commerce and the aid of steam 
 machinery ; races living mainly out of doors and sheltered 
 by tents or simple walls and roofs instead of by the 
 wonderfully fitted structures of the present day that make 
 indoor life quite a busy sphere of its own. To the old rural 
 men, the gigantic play of the elements, the alternations of the 
 seasons, the ceaseless steps of night and day, must have had a 
 significance that we cannot now recall. 
 
 To imaginations fostered by long winter glooms which 
 enforced comparative idleness, and fed by the superstitions 
 which lonely life in remote districts engenders, not to name 
 the frequent shocks accruing from the casualties by storm and 
 many kinds of danger to which barbarian life is exposed, it is 
 no wonder that the processes of nature should appeal with 
 startling vividness, and readily assume even a personal shape. 
 To the shepherd contemplating from a hillside the sky blood 
 red after a storm, and then seeing the evening setting in with 
 ghostly shadows marshalled in the lowlands, which ever 
 encroached upon the spear-wielding armies of light till these 
 seemed to mount the hills and vanish, with front still towards 
 the foe ; the combatants may well have seemed to wear heroic 
 forms, spectral, and associated in his mind with vanished 
 ancestors. And when, after the pause and hush of night, 
 during which the shapes of blackness reigned supreme, or 
 were feebly attacked by the silver-clad pigmy host of stars, 
 how gladly must he have welcomed as a strenuous deity and 
 friend the deathless lord that rushed into the sky, gave battle, 
 and put to flight all ghastly dreams and terrors ! 
 
 What a charm must poetry have possessed in those days 
 of unmurdered simplicity! What magical delight, "in a 
 season of calm weather," to witness over again by the aid 
 of graphic story some mighty struggle of wind with rain, or 
 sun with cloud, or day with night, realized in the persons 
 of heroes and monsters who were but shadows made definite 
 and immortal ! Bellerophon on winged Pegasus slays the
 
 22 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 monster dragon Chimaera, type ever of haunting mysterious 
 dread. The Firmament, an ancient mighty god, hates the 
 fierce turbulent Titanic children of earth, and imprisons them. 
 Their mother forges a sickle of white iron and gives it to 
 a child called Time. When the Firmament came down 
 with Night and stretched brooding over earth, by Time he was 
 shorn of his strength, but his divided powers fall in blood 
 drops upon earth, and breed furies and giants and nymphs, 
 while prolific emblems fall into the sea, and from their white 
 foam comes tormenting Aphrodite, at whose footstep blooms 
 verdure, as at her touch the heart of man becomes elate. 
 
 Time, being set up for sovereign, swallows his offspring so 
 soon as born, poor short-lived babes, who seem to represent 
 the days that vanish one after the other down that hungry 
 maw we call Eternity. But Zeus, whom we must perhaps 
 here regard as essential life, eludes the devouring deity, who 
 swallows instead a huge dead stone, which he afterwards 
 disgorges together with the once-swallowed children, who now 
 typify perhaps the return of the days and seasons. As to this 
 stone, we should perhaps be too subjective if claiming to 
 regard it as the symbol of matter, which we now know to be 
 chemically swallowed and disgorged again in new transmuted 
 form. The poetic imagination in seizing upon its romantic 
 food was wont to overleap itself, and the eventual form of 
 fancy sometimes veils rather than manifests the original 
 idea from which it started. 
 
 Of deep import in another direction is the legend of 
 Sisyphos the overwise, if the etymology of the name be 
 correct. He was so cunning that he sought to outwit fate, 
 and when his time was come to die, he constrained his wife 
 to promise to leave his body unburied, which was an offence 
 against the custom of the time, and was thought to restrain 
 the shade to forlorn wanderings in an outer Hades. When he 
 had arrived in those regions, he put in action his subtle plan 
 of getting back to earth, by craving permission to return for
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 225 
 
 the purpose of punishing his wife for her shameful neglect. 
 Reaching earth once more, he ignored the condition of his 
 having been allowed the visit, which was his solemn promise 
 to return, and was accordingly most ignominiously captured 
 and taken back to Hades by Ares. His punishment, which 
 evidences a moral conception of retribution, was to roll 
 uphill a huge stone that for ever rolled down again a fine 
 metaphor of the injurious project that recoils upon its prime 
 mover. 
 
 The story of Prometheus gives promise of being pregnant 
 with meaning, but the legend is somewhat defaced, as if 
 drawn from an imperfectly understood original. lapetus, a 
 mystical personage whose name is equally akin with Japheth 
 and lao-pitar or Jupiter, has four sons : broad-backed Atlas, 
 a doomed Titan, who supports the vault of heaven, and would 
 seem to represent endurance ; Mencetius, who represents 
 overweening arrogance, hurled down to Hades ; Prometheus, 
 representing providence or forethought, and identical with 
 the Indian Pramantha, or instrument for churning out fire 
 from pieces of dried stick ; and Epimetheus, afterthought or 
 blindness. 
 
 Inapprehensive Epimetheus, laggard in wits, careful after 
 the event, receives from Zeus a very dangerous gift, an in- 
 extricable snare. Water and earth were mingled by the 
 order of the derisive deity. The compound was endued with 
 voice and strength as of a man, and with a maiden's love- 
 liness like in countenance to the immortal goddesses. Pallas 
 was bidden to teach her spinster's work, and Aphrodite to 
 endow her with grace and allurement, with a spell to produce 
 woeful desire and cares that waste the limbs, while Hermes 
 was allowed to bestow a winning quality of voice, an impudent 
 mind, and tricksy ways. With mien like a modest maiden, 
 decked with every grace, hung with Persuasion's golden chains, 
 and crowned by the fast-fleeting fair-tressed Hours (the 
 seasons) with blossoms of spring, apparelled with every orna- 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 ment, this incarnate mischief is ushered forth. She is called 
 Pandora, because every Olympian deity bestows on her a gift. 
 
 Prometheus had warned his brother not to accept a gift 
 from Zeus, but to return it, for fear of its containing insidious 
 hurt to mortals. They had obtained the advantage of fire ; 
 they were now to receive disadvantage in countervail, the 
 pernicious race of woman, who is represented as no aid in 
 poverty, but a helpmate of surfeit There is evident pre- 
 judice in the legend, though the kind of woman pointed at 
 may be deemed still to exist. 
 
 Either the same writer in a more agreeable mood, or some 
 other writer, corrects this partial view by picturing the per- 
 nicious old age of the celibate, the distant kindred partitioning 
 his goods at his decease ; and on the other hand, the lot of 
 marriage when it comes with a good congenial wife, a happy 
 chance that may now and then recur, since the original evil 
 has good ever contending with it. 
 
 Pandora would seem to be a late arrival in an old legend. 
 The Homeric tradition is that two caskets of gifts are at the 
 bestowal of Zeus, the one containing evils, the other goods. 
 In giving, Zeus mingles these opposites, but sometimes presents 
 evil alone. 
 
 According to the version of Hesiod, the casket of evils is 
 closed, but the beautiful caprice, through prying curiosity no 
 doubt, as befits a Greek Eve, removes the great lid from the 
 vessel, and disperses these imprisoned banes, which are thus 
 outpoured upon men. The legend is again somewhat con- 
 fusing, for evils having become disseminated by being let 
 loose, Hope, which is surely not an evil, is allowed to be 
 bestowed upon man, which boon is accomplished, not by that 
 sweet solace being permitted to fly forth and accompany the 
 troop of ills, but by the lid being shut down again before 
 Hope, in flitting forth, had passed the vessel's verge. The 
 only quality in the box, which, fallacious though it may often 
 be, can fairly be deemed a good quality, is not allowed to 
 go forth.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 227 
 
 To these confusions or contradictions may be added 
 another, that Pandora would not have been led to open the 
 box of baneful things if she had not already been [endowed 
 with a harmful quality called curiosity. 
 
 Finally, the conception of mankind as composed of males, 
 lonely "Adams" living wretched without the boon of fire, then 
 blessed with furtive fire, and afterwards dowered with woman 
 and a box of woes, is contradictory to the story which makes 
 the Golden Age the first period in the cosmogony according 
 to Hesiod. If, however, we take the Golden Age to be a dim 
 representation of a visionary pre-existence, and the evils let 
 loose upon man to be such as are inseparable from existence 
 on a corporeal plane, the inconsistency becomes less glaring. 
 
 In Prometheus is the conception of a benefactor to men 
 standing midway between them and a jealous god, a Zeus 
 who, in the aspect which he wears in this story, is to be 
 frustrated rather than trusted. He binds Prometheus in in- 
 extricable bonds, with galling chains, which are attached to a 
 column, and incites against him an eagle which daily preys 
 upon his liver ; this organ, however, being immortal, makes up 
 its loss by new growth during the night. 
 
 There is much that is attractive in the picture of Prome- 
 theus, the Titan who wrests from an unwilling deity (who in 
 modern view might be deemed unwilling only because gifts 
 have to be won before they can be truly held) the gift of fire, 
 without which the progress of mankind would be impossible. 
 Perhaps, in too modern a spirit, we might interpret the eagle's 
 gnawing as the pain of the anxious taking thought which so 
 eats into the joy element in the life of humanity, the gnawing 
 fret of the state in which, as embodying Prometheus in our- 
 selves, 
 
 " We look before and after, 
 And pine for what is not." 
 
 Again, there is a chain that binds down this Titan coun- 
 sellor : foresight is constrained and limited in life as we know
 
 228 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 it ; worldly wisdom is content with very short views : in life 
 beyond ours we may indulge hope that the Prometheus is 
 more loosely chained, and allowed a more extended view of 
 life. In Hesiod, at any rate, he is a strange, dim, heroic 
 figure, who seems to afford us some misty mystic revelation of 
 ourselves. 
 
 III. 
 
 Of the oracular poets before Homer we know so little that 
 poetry distinctly objective may be claimed as the firstfruits 
 of Greece. In Hesiod the grand careless naturalness of the 
 old pagan ballad is crossed by a strain of care, and the free, 
 almost reckless, ideal of the Homeric heroes is succeeded by 
 a moralism quickened by the recognition of the irresistible, 
 irreturnable buffets which proceed from no mortal foe, but 
 from the heavy hands of worldly experience. If there were 
 any young illusion that life is a jovial revel in which the day 
 of the feast never fades into the day after, in Hesiod it is 
 vanished. 
 
 After Homer, the broad pictures of artless life are seldom 
 found in their primitive simplicity ; the poetic mind has turned 
 inwards, and in that introspection finds querulousness come to 
 mingle with joy ; or else is outside of what it depicts, and uses 
 artifice to give a show of reality to its conceptions. 
 
 Few outside the student rank have much knowledge of 
 the poets of the period immediately following Hesiod. Never- 
 theless, we are their debtors, for if to the Homeric age we are 
 to ascribe the invention of a metre which is found not very 
 suitable to our own language, we must credit to a poet who 
 came afterwards, a metre, without which as a model, so 
 familiar a home product as Gray's " Elegy," with probably 
 some thousands more of English poems, would scarcely have 
 been written in their present form. Archilochus, the poet in 
 question, an unfortunate and exasperated man, lived in the
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 229 
 
 earlier part of the seventh century before our era. As the 
 story runs, a girl who was betrothed to him jilted him for a 
 wealthier man, and the passionate wretch in return drove both 
 her and her father to desperation by his stinging iambics. 
 
 His verse is more severe, less simply aesthetic, than that of 
 the poets of a ruder period ; his metrical specialty lies as 
 much in a style of versification as in the iambic rhythm. 
 Before his century, the continued ballad, or the epic, was the 
 only kind of poetry, the heroic the only measure at all general. 
 Soon after him sprang into existence a small crowd of minor 
 bards. 
 
 The best-known poem by Archilochus is a brief and philo- 
 sophic address to his soul, a piece of advice to himself that 
 perhaps may seem old and trite to us, but if interpolated 
 among the dramatic narratives of Homer, would suggest a 
 comparatively modern mood. Several English translations 
 have been made of the poem. 
 
 It is fair to a writer to give more than one translation of 
 his work, if such exist. One may help to throw light upon 
 him where another does not ; and they are unlikely all to 
 maim him in the same limb, so that some notion of him can 
 be gained from the very clash of the paraphrases. The follow- 
 ing are some of the versions of the little poem : 
 
 " My soul, my soul, by cares past all relief 
 
 Distracted sore, bear up ! with manly breast, 
 And dauntless mien, each fresh assault of grief 
 Encountering. By hostile weapons pressed, 
 Stand firm. Let no unlooked-for triumph move 
 
 To empty exultation ; no defeat 
 Cast down. But still let moderation prove 
 Of life's uncertain cup the bitter and the sweet." 
 
 (COLONEL MURE.) 
 
 " Spirit, thou spirit, like a troubled sea, 
 Ruffled with deep and hard calamity, 
 Sustain the shock : a daring heart oppose : 
 Stand firm, amidst the charging spears of foes :
 
 230 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 If conquering, vaunt not in vain-glorious show : 
 If conquered, stoop not, prostrated in woe : 
 Moderate, in joy, rejoice ; in sorrow, mourn : 
 Muse on man's lot : be thine discreetly borne." 
 
 ( ELTON.) 
 
 " O soul, my soul, though tost by care, 
 Whence chance of rest is hard and rare, 
 Keep up, protect thyself, and throw 
 A manly breast to meet thy foe. 
 Where worst his arms and ambush threat, 
 Possess thee, firm and fearless, yet ; 
 To no proud boasts, when victor, borne, 
 By no despair, when vanquished, torn ; 
 Joy not too loud when life is glad, 
 Nor sink too low when days seem bad, 
 But still preserve the proper mean 
 Each perilous extreme between." 
 
 (MAJOR R. G. MACGREGOR.) 
 
 "My soul, my soul, careworn, bereft of rest, 
 Arise ! and front the foe, with dauntless breast ; 
 Take thy firm stand amidst his fierce alarms ; 
 Secure, with inborn valour meet his arms. 
 Nor, conquering, mount vain-glory's glittering steep ; 
 Nor, conquered, yield, fall down at home, and weep. 
 Await the turns of life with duteous awe ; 
 Know, Revolution is great Nature's law." 
 
 (MARQUIS WELLESLEY.) 
 
 We have attempted a more doggedly literal version : 
 
 O soul, O soul, mazed by resistless cares, 
 
 Up ! stem thy woes by putting forth thy breast ; 
 When the spears menace, stand in sturdy rest. 
 
 If victory thine, show no inflated airs ; 
 
 Come loss, then skulk not, making gloom thy guest ; 
 
 Vaunt not success, nor grieve 'neath evil's ban, 
 
 Too much, but learn what rhythm encloses man. 
 
 Two poets mark the former part of the seventh century 
 before our era ; Alcman, the intense enthusiast for the 
 beautiful, and father of erotic minstrelsy, and Terpandros, 
 who brought elocutionary perfection to the recital of Homer's 
 verses, and has the fame of having added three new strings
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 231 
 
 to the lyre, which first had but four. His great invention, 
 however, is that of characters for musical notation. 
 
 Alcman, if we may trust a fragment found in a tomb in 
 Egypt, and edited by M. A. Canini, held to a simple poetical 
 mythology and the old nature worship. "Love, Fate, and 
 Force are of all daimons the most ancient. Deity makes man 
 happy by the gift of the Graces. From the Divine ones comes 
 vengeance also." 
 
 Alcman's epithet for memory is well worth making a 
 mental note of ; it is " that which has sight within the mind." 
 
 Before we pass from the elegiac poets, the fathers of the 
 subjective school, to the division of the literary stream into 
 lyric and gnome, a word is due to the fabulists. Archilochus 
 is said to have woven fables into his verses, but the ancient 
 school of fable is ranked under the familiar name of ^Esop. 
 
 JEsop, it is said, was born a slave, but such was his talent 
 that, following the mode of expressing moral instruction then 
 prevailing in Attica, he was able to baffle the tyrannical 
 projects of an autocrat by a fable, reminding us of the relations 
 of Nathan and King David and the parable of the ewe lamb. 
 But, according to report, his usual manner was to say pleasant 
 things. A conversation with Solon is given in which JEsop 
 exclaims, " Solon ! either we must not speak to kings, or we 
 must say what will please them." Solon replies, " We should 
 either not speak to kings at all, or we should give them good 
 advice, and speak truth." What a touchstone of politics lies 
 in this essential difference ! 
 
 The kind of fable associated with the name of ^Esop can 
 scarcely be described as religious ; it constitutes a branch of 
 literature adjoining rather than coincident with the loftier 
 region of parable. It is as much the father of the modern 
 novel, as in their several ways are the epic and the drama. 
 But though, through being a teacher of worldly wisdom, fable 
 may not take the highest rank as an instructor, yet it may 
 not rightly be thrust outside the sphere of ethical instruments.
 
 232 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 By the ironic flash in which it exposes human motives, by the 
 stream of piercing light which it throws upon subtle phases of 
 human conduct, rays which it is impossible to evade, fable 
 may claim to be a divine agent in an equal degree with a 
 sermon. 
 
 The chief use of the fable, however, seems to have been 
 political. " The Belly and the Members " contains the essence 
 of the best republicanism ; " The Sick Lion and Fox " shows 
 the subtlety of a tyrant and the wit of his victims ; " The 
 Eagle and the Fox " might have been a caution to some proud 
 potentate that he was not so absolutely impregnable but that 
 some unexpected attack might yet be made to reach him. 
 " The Horse and the Stag " was deftly used to warn certain 
 citizens who were debating whether they should assign a 
 bodyguard to their ruler, by which they would have given him 
 the power of bit and saddle over themselves. " The Old Man 
 and Death," which is regarded as one of the oldest and most 
 authentic fables of those that bear the name of ^Esop, is a 
 fine commentary on the difficulty felt by mortals of knowing 
 what they want most : " A poor, feeble old man, who had 
 crawled out into a neighbouring wood to gather a few sticks, 
 had made up his bundle, and, laying it upon his shoulders, 
 was trudging home with it. Wearied with age and the length 
 of the way and the weight of his burden, he grew so faint and 
 weak that he sank under it, and as he sat on the ground, 
 called upon the death-deity to come once for all and ease him 
 of his troubles. Death no sooner heard him than he came 
 and demanded what was wanted. The poor old man, who 
 little thought Death had been so near, and was frighted out 
 of his senses by his visitor's grim aspect, answered him, 
 trembling, That having, by some mishap, let fall his bundle 
 of sticks, and being too infirm to get them by himself on his 
 shoulder, he had made bold to call for help ; which, indeed, 
 was all he wanted." This fable is generally supposed to be 
 referred to by Euripides in the Alcestis, and is a good
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 233 
 
 example of the peculiar province of fable, which we have 
 endeavoured to define. Certain fables of vEsop are also 
 referred to by Aristophanes, Demosthenes, and Aristotle, and 
 he is named by Herodotus. But since in Hesiod may be 
 found a fable afterwards included with those bearing the 
 name of yEsop, the question of actual authorship becomes 
 very obscure. 
 
 It is pleasant to think of Socrates, as is recorded by Plato, 
 versifying some of the fables of ^Esop to relieve the tedium of 
 prison. 
 
 The history of the Oracle, as it winds in and out of the 
 history of Greece, has not yet been written. That in its un- 
 corrupted period its influence was not unlike that of the 
 prophetic voice among the Hebrews, we may fairly infer. 
 The principle of it seems to have been the purification of the 
 natural senses, so that they should open themselves to influx 
 from a higher range of faculties. The following from the 
 Anthology, entitled " Oracle of the Pythia," is a fine instance 
 of the ancient symbolism of baptism : 
 
 " Enter the pure God's Temple sanctified 
 In soul, with virgin water purified. 
 One drop will cleanse the good ; the Ocean wave 
 Suffices not the guilty soul to lave." 
 
 (H. WELLESLEY, D.D.). 
 
 Our own version runs : 
 
 Be clean in soul, O stranger, and laved in vestal spring, 
 The Deity's pure precincts if e'er thou wouldst draw nigh : 
 
 One drop for worthy men suffices everything ; 
 To cleanse the vile would make the ocean's streams run dry. 
 
 As, according to the Hebrew record, there were times 
 when the written word was precious, or inspiration was lacking ; 
 times when there was no mystic faculty to be found in any one, 
 " no distinguishing open vision ; " so also there are times when 
 poetry vanishes and prose takes its place. The soul is no 
 longer led by eager feeling, but, as it were, requires shafts to
 
 234 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 support it, a whip to stimulate, and orderly rather than spon- 
 taneous work. There is a subsidence from bright and elevating 
 emotion into calmness of thought. The gnomists of Greece 
 show two sides, the one a wisdom which has not lost the 
 spiritual glow, and so may truly be called philosophy ; the 
 other an intellectual frigidity degenerating into dogmatism, 
 and so producing the peculiar arrogance of the sage. 
 
 The true seer is inspirationally gifted ; the true poet is 
 affectionately and humanly wise ; entering upon regions less 
 celestial than the one and less romantic than the other, we 
 find a class claiming the title of sage, and busying themselves 
 upon the evolution of good mundane truth in the practical 
 form of maxim and apophthegm. A class of utmost political 
 benefit if its sound sagacity can be worked into the basis of 
 law ; a class very dead if it miss alike the practical stimulus 
 of real life and the ideal fervour of the earnest prophet. A 
 sage evolving even with mathematical accuracy a sententious 
 perfection of thought, shall be of less import to mankind than 
 a man of but half his intellectual ability who, whatever he has 
 to give, savours it with love's earnestness. 
 
 Synchronous with the gnomic period in Greece was the 
 beginning of physical speculation and study ; and we have 
 to thank the men of that time for influences recognizable in 
 very different provinces of life ; in wonders of physical 
 science, in the undying wisdom of proverbial lore, and in the 
 dulness of sermons. 
 
 Thales is regarded as the father of Greek philosophy, not 
 because he introduced much that was truly majestic to the 
 world, but because he made of physical research a study 
 apart from that of mystic cosmogony, which perhaps had 
 grown somewhat chaotic. Instead of the physical universe 
 being regarded as a link in the chain of a great moral 
 conception of life, its substances began to be scratched and 
 laid bare to discover whether in them could not be found the 
 true beginning of things. When Thales and his followers
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 235 
 
 sought in water, fire, or air substance rather than spirit to 
 find what had hitherto been sought in the power and purpose 
 of Deity, they were beginning that terrible disruption which 
 has broken the old homogeneous philosophy into the two 
 discordant schools of theology and materialism. 
 
 The Seven Sages, according to Diogenes Laertius, a 
 writer of the second or third century, were Thales, Solon, 
 Periandros, Kleoboulos, Cheilon, Bias, Pittakos. But some of 
 these must hold a doubtful place, or there were more than 
 seven in this constellation of wisdom, for there are added also 
 Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson, Pherekydes the Syrian, 
 Epimenides the Cretan, and Peisistratos. It is curious to 
 mark the differences of nationality amongst men professedly 
 Greek, denoting that Greece was a sort of focus to the intellect 
 and culture of the time, the centre not only to Asia Minor and 
 the islands, but even to more distant regions. Thales himself, 
 born at Miletus, is said by Herodotus to have been Phoenician 
 by origin, and both Diogenes and Plutarch allege that he 
 learned his philosophy in Egypt. 
 
 Thales being a natural philosopher, as well as a moralist, 
 an astronomer, a geometrician, and a believer in the soul, 
 may well have found himself with enough to occupy him 
 to the full. Indeed, his pursuits so fully absorbed him that, 
 as the story goes, when his mother urged him to marry, 
 he replied that it was not yet the time. When years had 
 passed, and his youth was gone, she pressed him again, 
 and he changed his reply, now saying, " It is no longer the 
 time." 
 
 Thales has been described as the first person who affirmed 
 that the souls of men were immortal. This is an absurd 
 position to assume with regard to an instinct which has 
 manifested itself in one form or other in every nation known 
 to history. That he affirmed the soul to be " moveless yet 
 ever moving," as otherwise recorded, seems more probable. 
 
 A tripod was, it is said, drawn up in a net by some fisher-
 
 236 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 men of Miletus, and became the cause of dispute. They sent 
 to the Oracle at Delphi, and received as answer : 
 
 " You ask about the tripod, to whom you shall present it ; 
 It's for the wisest I reply, that fortune surely meant it." 
 
 It was accordingly given to Thales, but he passed it on to 
 some one else, and eventually it came to Solon. He said 
 that it was the Deity himself that was the first in wisdom, 
 and so sent the tripod to Delphi again. 
 
 Among the recorded sayings of Thales may be found the 
 following : 
 
 " Beautify not the appearance, but be beautiful in practice." 
 This is a literal rendering, and not so well polished by use as 
 " Handsome is that handsome does." 
 
 "Be not enriched in an ill way." "Be not idle, even 
 though you be rich." " If you rule, order yourself." " Be at 
 one with yourself." " Have a care of life." 
 
 " All things are full of the gods." " What is the eldest of 
 things ? God, for he had no birth. . . . What is the wisest ? 
 Time, for what it has not found out already, it yet will find. 
 What is the most common ? Hope, for though one have 
 nought else, this is near by. What is the most serviceable ? 
 Virtue, for this by right use makes other things of service. 
 What is the most harmful? Vice, for there are few things 
 which its presence does not harm. What is the strongest ? 
 Necessity, for it alone is .unconquered. What is the easiest ? 
 That which is according to nature ; since even in pleasures men 
 often grow weary." 
 
 " An adulterer asked of him whether he should swear 
 that he had not committed adultery. ' Is not perjury,' he 
 replied, ' worse than adultery ? ' ' 
 
 " He used to say that death differed nothing from life. 
 ' Why, then,' said some one, ' do you not therefore die ? ' 
 ' Because there is no difference,' he replied." 
 
 " When some one asked him whether a man's sin escapes 
 the notice of the gods, ' No, not even his intent,' he replied."
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 237 
 
 "When asked how we may best and most justly live, he 
 said, ' If that which we blame in others, we never do our- 
 selves.' " 
 
 Some of these sayings seem very trite, but we must bear 
 in mind the reason why they are so, that they have come 
 down to us almost unconsciously to ourselves, and form part 
 of our own proverbial tradition. 
 
 Certain truths seem to be so assured as to have become 
 the inalienable property of man, and to be ready ever to take 
 root in a new form. It would be difficult to discover which 
 among the following most nearly represents the earliest or 
 original expression : 
 
 " Harm seek, harm find." 
 
 " Curses, like chickens, come home to roost." 
 
 " He that is an object of dread to many, let him dread 
 many." 
 
 " Gains that are base are equal to a loss." 
 
 " 111 got, ill spent." 
 
 " He harms himself who plans another's harm ; and evil 
 counsel serves its author worst." 
 
 " If you have spoken ill, haply you will yourself hear 
 worse." 
 
 " Such word as thou speakest shalt thou have to 
 hearken to." 
 
 " Give, and it shall be given unto you." 
 
 " With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto 
 you." 
 
 " They that took sword shall perish by sword." 
 
 " If any one is for captivity, into captivity he goes ; if 
 any one will slay with the sword, he must be slain with the 
 sword." 
 
 " He that striketh with the sword shall be beaten with the 
 scabbard." 
 
 " Hoist by his own petard." 
 
 " Pain comes after anger."
 
 238 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " He who smites will be smitten ; he who shows rancour 
 will find rancour ; so likewise from reviling comes reviling, 
 and to him who is angered comes anger." 
 
 " To evil sinks who evil thinks." 
 
 The result of the speculations of Thales, leaving the 
 celestial contemplations of the ancient bards for the scrutiny 
 of the obscurities of nature, was that all things had their 
 origin in water ; that earth was flat, and floated on the water : 
 a kind of discovery that does not greatly enlarge or deepen 
 our conceptions of life. The morals of Thales are much to 
 be preferred to his science. However, as an astronomer, he 
 progressed so far as to note the fact of the solstices and 
 equinoxes : he could measure the height of a pyramid ; and 
 is said to have been able to predict the time of an eclipse 
 within a year. 
 
 Solon, who divides with Thales the honour of being the 
 first of the seven sages, is popularly known as a lawgiver rather 
 than a poet or ethical teacher ; but he was all three. As a 
 lawgiver, he inclined to what would now be styled paternal 
 government ; he enjoined that if any one did not support his 
 parents he should be accounted infamous ; that the man who 
 squandered his patrimony should be equally so accounted, 
 and that the sluggard was liable to prosecution by any one 
 who chose to impeach him, while an annual inquiry was per- 
 mitted into the manner in which each citizen maintained 
 himself. These were sharp, if wholesome enactments, but 
 milder than Draco's code, which had assigned to idleness a 
 penalty as severe as the punishment for murder. The laws 
 of marriage Solon revised, so as to make that union so far as 
 possible one of affection and tenderness, rather than a mer- 
 cenary contract. His laws were evidently framed to protect 
 the poorer citizens, and such was the wisdom with which they 
 were adapted to the need, that they remained in full force for 
 over four centuries. 
 
 Solon recognized the virtue of really conscientious com-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 239 
 
 promise ; when asked if he had made the best laws for the 
 people, he replied : The best that they would have accepted. 
 He had great power moreover as an orator, charming a large 
 audience by his verse. But, like every reformer, he found his 
 plans disturbed by offended faction. Born in Salamis, he 
 died self-exiled from Athens in Cyprus, at the age of eighty. 
 Solon, though a poet, had a lack of imagination. Had he 
 possessed this quality, he would have been able to discern 
 and foster the good uses of the stage. As it was, he expressed 
 his indignation at the dramatic representations of Thespis, 
 sternly observing that if fiction (which he regarded as false- 
 hood), were tolerated on the stage, untruth would find its way 
 into the common occupations of men. Truly it does so find 
 its way, but its impetus cannot be said to be due to any form 
 of imaginative fiction. 
 
 Some of the words of Solon may well put us to the blush, 
 for we can no more come up to their level in practice than we 
 can transcend it in thought. " When he was asked how men 
 could be most effectually deterred from injustice, he said, If 
 those who are not being injured feel an equal indignation 
 with those that are." 
 
 Among his maxims we may instance the following : 
 " Nothing in excess." " Flee from such pleasure as brings 
 forth sorrow." " Adhere to moral probity as more trustworthy 
 than an oath." " Make friends slowly, but once made, do not 
 hastily repudiate them." " If you expect others to give correct 
 accounts, be ready to submit your own." " Counsel not what 
 is pleasantest, but what is best." " Conjecture the obscure 
 from the manifest." " Worship God, reverence parents, suc- 
 cour friends, envy no one, sustain the truth." " The end of 
 every matter must be considered, in what direction it will 
 tend." " Consider your honour as a gentleman of more 
 weight than an oath." " I grow old finding ever much to 
 learn." 
 
 Here is a truth which is as manifest now as it was in
 
 240 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Solon's day : " Laws are like cobwebs, which hold fast any- 
 thing light and insignificant, but when anything greater 
 comes in, it bursts through them and is gone." The following 
 appeals to personal sympathy : "When he was shedding 
 tears over a son that had died, he was told that he was effect- 
 ing nothing. It is because I effect nothing, he said, that I 
 weep." 
 
 The following seem to be based upon Solon's experience 
 as a statesman : 
 
 " In great matters it is difficult to please all. 
 
 " As much as iron can effect in war, so far can well-handled 
 speech prevail in a state." 
 
 Another apophthegm shows one reason of his for the pro- 
 tection of the persons of the poor, namely, that the over-rich 
 become injurious to the state. " Satiety," he said, " is gene- 
 rated by wealth, and insolence by satiety." He gives a caution 
 too, which illustrates his experience of the rich : " Be not idle, 
 even if thou art wealthy." The same saying is also ascribed 
 to Thales. 
 
 The following is told of Solon : " When he was spat upon 
 by some one and bore the affront with equanimity, and was 
 blamed by some one else on that account, he replied, 'Are 
 then fishers to abide being sprayed by the sea, to catch a 
 koby, while I am not to be patient to endure the same, to be 
 fisher of a man ? ' ' 
 
 This resembles what was afterwards known as Stoicism, 
 but with heart in it ; it even transcends the triumph over 
 externals enjoined by Confucius : " A scholar whose mind 
 is set on truth and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad 
 food, is not fit to be discoursed with." 
 
 Solon said : " When thou hast learned how to obey, thou 
 wilt know how to rule." 
 
 There is an unwritten tradition which supports this maxim : 
 a boy at a public school who on his entrance is placed in a 
 class above those junior forms, whose members fulfil the useful
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 241 
 
 office of " fag " to the seniors, will be told by his comrades 
 that when it comes to his turn to have " fags " of his own, he 
 will not know how to treat them, through not having been a 
 " fag " himself. 
 
 One of Solon's ordinances, in the inferences to which it 
 leads, has been reduced by modern acuteness to something of 
 a dilemma. His law is, " Whosoever shall put out the eye of 
 him that hath but one, shall have both his own put out for so 
 doing." What, the modern critic asks, shall be done in the 
 reversed case, where a man having but one eye happens to 
 thrust out one of his neighbour's two ? Shall he lose his sole 
 eye by way of retaliation ? If so, he would suffer double 
 penalty for his offence. 
 
 Pittakos was a general and lawgiver of Mitylene. In a 
 very naive manner he gives his experience of life : " It is a 
 difficult thing to be a really good man." The same elevation 
 of motive, which constitutes virtue, marks him that charac- 
 terizes the others of the group of this period. " Forbear," 
 he said, " to speak evil, not only of your friends but also of 
 your enemies." 
 
 His sentence " The half is of more account than the 
 whole," is paradoxical. Does it mean that moderation is 
 better than surfeit, or self-control than licence, or that the 
 first half of most things is the pleasantest part, or that a good 
 abstract is better than a diffuse compilation ? The saying is 
 also found in Hesiod, and was probably an ancient proverb. 
 It is generally believed to originate in the advice to accept a 
 friendly compromise, rather than launch on the sea of litigation 
 even to win everything. 
 
 An apophthegm attributed to Pittakos is also ascribed to 
 Thales : " When asked whether the committer of an evil deed 
 escapes the sight of the gods, he replied, No, nor even of an 
 evil thought." One of his enactments was, that if a man 
 committed an offence when drunk, he should be visited with 
 double the ordinary penalty. Modern lawgivers who allow 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 drunkenness to count as an excuse, must settle this point with 
 Pittakos. 
 
 Bias was a barrister of an almost extinct school ; he would 
 only give his talent as a pleader to the side which seemed to 
 him to be in the right. With this fact in view, the manner 
 of his death is beautiful to contemplate. He had pleaded 
 a cause when he was extremely old, and after he had finished 
 speaking, he leaned back with his head on the bosom of his 
 grandson. The business of the court went on ; the advocate 
 on the opposite side made his speech ; the judges gave their 
 decision in favour of the client of Bias ; and when the court 
 broke up, the old man was found to have passed out of mortal 
 life unperceived. 
 
 All his apophthegms are in harmony with the upright and 
 religious nature of the man. " Unhappy he who cannot bear 
 unhappiness " is an epigrammatic saying of his. " Good 
 men," he said, " are easily deceived ; " but he was by no means 
 without shrewdness himself, for this is an observation of his : 
 " It is preferable to decide a question between enemies than 
 between friends, for of the friends the one against whom it 
 goes is sure to turn enemy, while of the enemies one is sure to 
 become a friend." 
 
 "When he was asked which was the most pernicious 
 amongst animals, he replied, ' Amongst wild ones the tyrant, 
 amongst tame ones the flatterer.' " 
 
 "An impious man asked him, what kind of thing might 
 piety be ? He was silent. When the other asked him the 
 cause of his silence, he said, ' I am silent, because you are 
 asking of things with which you have no concern.' " 
 
 " He was asked what was the best counsellor, and replied, 
 ' The moment itself.' " 
 
 Of Bias, Cicero tells the story, that when his native place 
 Priene fell into the hands of the enemy, and the citizens were 
 taking flight and carrying large quantities of their property 
 with them, Bias was admonished by some one to do the same.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 243 
 
 " But I am doing so," he replied, " for I am carrying with me 
 all that I have." 
 
 Periandros was an absolute ruler, and might well have 
 been omitted from the constellation of sages. Indeed it is 
 wonderful how he should have been placed there, in face of 
 the recorded but almost incompatible elements in his charac- 
 ter wisdom, cruelty, and wickedness. There is a question, 
 however, whether there were not two of the name. The only 
 noticeable saying among those ascribed, to him, is that " When 
 asked, what is the greatest thing in the smallest, he replied, 
 ' A good soul-faculty in the body of a man.' " 
 
 Perhaps Periandros, like Solomon, saw the good, but 
 found evil present with him. The saying ascribed to him, 
 " Pleasures are mortal, virtues are immortal," may be that of a 
 man who had tried the one, but only longed for the other. 
 
 Cheilon was a son of Sparta, and is a fair exemplar of the 
 Spartan sobriety and manliness. 
 
 " The story runs that when he was asked by ^Esop what 
 Zeus was doing, he said, 'He is humbling the high and exalting 
 the lowly.' " This story, by a mistranslation of the Greek, has 
 been told the reverse way, that Cheilon asked the question of 
 
 The world has altered little these twenty-five centuries. 
 The same answer as Cheilon's might yet be made to the 
 question, " What is difficult ? To keep silence upon secrets, 
 to dispose well of leisure, and to be able to be bear unjust 
 treatment." 
 
 " When Cheilon saw the corpse of a miser being carried 
 forth, he said, This fellow lived a lifeless life, and has left 
 behind his life for others." 
 
 How easy it seems, how difficult it is, to conform in spirit 
 and in truth to the following maxim of Cheilon : " To the 
 banquets of friends come slowly, but to their misfortunes 
 with speed." 
 
 Cheilon was evidently a man of foresight, consideration,
 
 244 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 and patience. His ideal was of virtue, and was a sound one ; 
 many a lofty profession of religion, if bared to its real basis, 
 would show a less worthy range of motives. Cheilon taught : 
 " To prefer punishment to disgraceful gain ; for the one is 
 painful but once, but the other for one's whole life." " Not to 
 laugh at a person in misfortune." " If one is strong, to be 
 also merciful, so that one's neighbours may respect one rather 
 than fear one." " Not to dislike divination." " To obey the 
 laws." " To love quiet." 
 
 There are few relics of Kleoboulos, and some of those, such 
 as " Go more quickly to the misfortunes of friends than to 
 their good fortunes," seem confused with the sayings of other 
 sages. " What you hate, do not to another " is his approxima- 
 tion to the standard of the golden rule. " Every prudent and 
 wise man," says Kleoboulos, " hates a lie." 
 
 He may be claimed as an early supporter of the education 
 of women. " He used to say that daughters should be given 
 in marriage when girls in age, but women in sense, as indicat- 
 ing that even girls ought to be well educated." 
 
 Anacharsis was of royal birth and of a Scythian father, his 
 mother being Greek. He was brought up to know the lan- 
 guage of either parent. He chose the study of wisdom in pre- 
 ference to wealth and position, and in the time of Solon came 
 to Athens, where he spent his time in learning, and was initiated 
 into the Eleusinian mysteries. This honour was unique for a 
 barbarian, and had such weight with him as to make him 
 almost forget his own country. But when his friend Solon 
 died, he returned. 
 
 One of the sayings of Anacharsis might be the origin 
 of Ruskin's expression, " necessary play," or the phrase, 
 " recreation a religious duty ; " he says : " You must play, in 
 order to do serious work." " When asked for what cause men 
 are always unhappy, he replied, ' Because they are unhappy 
 not only about the ills of their own, but also about the good 
 things of others.' "
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 245 
 
 The seventh and sixth centuries before our era are marked 
 by an effervescence of ethical wisdom ; one country perhaps 
 communicating the impulse to another, for a comparison of 
 dates and histories points to a general revival of religious 
 thought as taking place about this period. The sages of our 
 race seem ever to have dowered us with fully as much wise 
 lore as we can absorb or make a good use of. In Greece, 
 wisdom was so plentiful, that after seven had been fixed upon 
 as a perfect number of sages, it was found difficult to confine 
 those who deserved the honour within the limits of it. They 
 now mostly seem like lesser lights showing the way to the 
 philosophic luminary Pythagoras. 
 
 One marked as proxime accessit to the constellation of 
 sages is Epimenides, whose strange history has been exposed 
 to doubt, apparently on the ground that he was of Crete, and 
 the Cretans were liars. 
 
 Epimenides is the original of Rip Van Winkle, whom 
 Washington Irving and Jefferson have made so fabulously 
 and dramatically real to us. It is told of Epimenides that once, 
 when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for 
 a sheep, he at midday turned out of the road, and lay down 
 in a cave and fell asleep. Whether the cave was impregnated 
 with gas such as helped the priestesses of the oracle into their 
 trance, tradition does not say ; but Epimenides slept for seven- 
 and-fifty years. It is curious to think of this in connection 
 with the fact that at the present day scientific theories should 
 be put forward upon the possibility of prolonged suspension 
 of animation by refrigeration, desiccation or otherwise. When 
 we think of the various animals that hibernate, and of those 
 that are dormant for indefinite periods, we may reasonably 
 allow that the suspension of physical functions on the part of 
 a human being of exceptional characteristics may, however 
 extraordinary, be yet an occurrence on the believable side 
 of the marvellous. When Epimenides awoke, he went on 
 looking for the stray sheep, thinking he had been taking a
 
 246 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 brief noonday nap ; but, as he could not find that long defunct 
 animal, he went back through the field, where he found every- 
 thing changed, and the estate in another person's possession. 
 In great perplexity he came back again to the city, and, as 
 he was going into his own house, he met certain folk who 
 inquired of him who he was. At last he found his younger 
 brother, who had now become an old man, and from him 
 he learned all the truth. 
 
 The theory must have been, that such a sleep betokened 
 the prophetic faculty, and that Epimenides had been a visitor 
 to the Olympian halls while his body lay sealed from his use ; 
 for so soon as he succeeded in identifying himself, he became 
 regarded as a person especially beloved by the gods. He was 
 reputed, as K. O. Miiller gathers from the ancient sources of 
 information, " A man of a sacred and marvellous nature, who 
 was brought up by the nymphs, and whose soul quitted his 
 body as long and as often as it pleased ; according to the 
 opinion of Plato and other ancients, his mind had a prophetic 
 and inspired sense of divine things." 
 
 The average commentator, however, unable to conceive 
 of a prophet not of the Hebrews, expresses himself thus 
 about Epimenides : " All that is credible about him is, that he 
 was a man of superior talents, who pretended to intercourse 
 with the gods ; and, to support his pretensions, lived in retire 
 ment on the spontaneous productions of the earth, and prac- 
 tised arts of imposture ; perhaps in his hours of pretended 
 inspiration had the art of appearing totally insensible and 
 entranced, easily mistaken by ignorant spectators for a power 
 of dismissing and recalling his spirit." It is instructive to 
 compare with this the view usually taken of the prophetic 
 ecstasy when it happens to have fallen upon a Hebrew. 
 Stochius, an expositor of a few centuries ago, describes the 
 state as " A sacred ecstasy, or rapture of the mind out of itself, 
 when, the use of external senses being suspended, God reveals 
 something in a peculiar manner to prophets and apostles, who
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 247 
 
 are then taken or transported out of themselves." And a 
 writer in " Kitto's Cyclopaedia " follows with the note that " the 
 same idea is intimated in the English word trance, from the 
 Latin transitus, the state of being carried out of one's self 
 . . . the nearest approach we can make to such a state, is 
 that in which our mind is so occupied in the contemplation of 
 an object as to lose entirely the consciousness of the body a 
 state in which the highest order of ideas, whether belonging 
 to the judgment or imagination, is undoubtedly attained." 
 
 Are we, then, to refuse Epimenides a place "among the 
 prophets," and not to allow it as possible that Greek wisdom, 
 as all truly spiritual wisdom, may be drawn secretly from 
 supernal worlds, as well as acquired by deductions from the 
 commonplaces of materialized life ? 
 
 Epimenides is credited with a considerable bulk of literary 
 work ; the titles of the subjects which he treated are, however, 
 all that remain to us in this department. They are evidence 
 of his mystical bent : he wrote on Minos,* the fabled Cretan 
 lawgiver, who, like himself, is said to have loved retirement in 
 a cave, wherein each time he stayed there a new law was 
 communicated to him by Zeus. With Zeus he was, as 
 Clement of Alexandria reads the tradition, as a familiar friend, 
 discoursing with him after the manner in which Jehovah is 
 said to have once conversed with Moses, " as one speaking 
 with his friend." The work treats also of Rhadamanthus, to 
 whom a Cretan birthplace is given, a king whom legend relates 
 to have become one of the judges of Hades, and whose name 
 is now traced back to that of the Egyptian Deity of the 
 Amenti, the regions of the unseen. A poetic theogony also 
 is ascribed to Epimenides, and a treatise of his Of Oracles and 
 Responses is referred to by Jerome, and is supposed to be the 
 work from which quotation is made in Paul's Epistle to 
 Titus (i. 12). 
 
 * Cf. Egyptian " Men," Hindu "Menu." The root still lives in the English 
 word "mind."
 
 248 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 The history of Epimenides is not without evidences of 
 other than literary activity. When the Athenians about 
 597 B.C. were in a state of discord and disorder, and were 
 troubled by certain sacrilegious acts which had occurred, and 
 the Delphic priestess had enjoined upon them to purify their 
 city, they invited the Cretan prophet and sage to come and 
 take means to rid them of the pollution. His ministrations 
 allayed the despondency of the people, and they offered their 
 benefactor a talent of gold, but he refused money and 
 accepted instead a little branch of the sacred olive tree which 
 grew on the Acropolis. He became acquainted with Solon, 
 whom he is said to have privately instructed in the proper 
 methods for the regulation of the Athenian Commonwealth. 
 Another story is, that he was assisted by Solon, from which 
 two accounts we may perhaps fairly infer that each learned 
 from the other, as one great man cannot but learn from 
 another. Plutarch states that Epimenides was accounted one 
 of the Seven Sages by those who would not admit Periandros 
 into the number. 
 
 There was high culture in Greece even at the early date of 
 Epimenides, a hundred years before the time of the first great 
 dramatist. The wit and poetry combats, as well as athletic 
 contests, of the Olympian games, had been long established ; 
 and there was friendship with Egypt, and colonization there. 
 
 It was still the heroic age ; national life had scarcely built 
 itself up in Greece out of clan and family life ; the village 
 patriarchal household and the city commune were the simple 
 forms of society, and the kindly laws of hospitality shed a 
 grand nobility over the rudeness of the time. 
 
 As civic life expanded, caste became more marked, and 
 the people of the Attic states were divided into classes whose 
 provinces were severally war, agriculture, the shepherd's trade, 
 and handicraft; while there were also classes of serfs attached 
 to the soil, which they held by payment of rent, mostly in 
 kind and according to their status, to the classes in power.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 249 
 
 Of whatever degrees the social scale was formed, Greek 
 life extended itself with rapid growth, until, half a millennium 
 before our era, the Mediterranean was a sort of Hellenic lake, 
 adorned with the manifold results of the work of the artist, 
 the sage, and the artificer : forms of beauty in stone, metal, 
 pottery, and in colour ; forms of strength in law, order, and 
 government ; forms of mental art embodying inner glow 
 and healthfulness in poetry and philosophy ; results of well- 
 trained labour in the harbour, the vessel, the temple, and 
 the house. Frequent wars, it is true, there were, but rarely 
 without some flash of virtue or stainless honour in them 
 redeeming the Greek faults of deceit and corruption. 
 
 Pherekydes has been cited as one of the earliest Greeks 
 who wrote in prose, and as having been a teacher of Pytha- 
 goras. A number of verified predictions are attributed to 
 him. As to his doctrines, some among ancient writers 
 suppose that they were derived from the sacred books of the 
 Phoenicians ; others that he studied in Egypt, and learned 
 there the symbolical method. These beliefs at least show 
 that in the days before thoughts were circulated by printing 
 it was deemed no marvel for the lore of one country to pene- 
 trate and influence another. 
 
 Anaximandros is one of that group of Greek philosophers 
 who had ceased to look to interior, occult, or oracular reve- 
 lations for the secrets of the laws of life, and searched instead 
 into the facts of the external world. Both methods must 
 result in the same story where they meet ; spiritual explana- 
 tions are liable to become spoiled and confused in passage 
 through unperceptive minds ; external details are more 
 generally comprehensible, but seem to lead the mind a long 
 way round before it can find a direct path through them to 
 the secrets of the universe. 
 
 Anaximandros, whom Cicero styles the fellow-country- 
 man and crony of Thales, but who is otherwise regarded as 
 rather his disciple and successor, avoided the pitfalls of
 
 250 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 ascribing to water, air, or fire the source and origin of life, 
 and took refuge in infinity as the starting-point and head of 
 all things. Infinity, not in the sense of exhaustlessness of 
 pervading Deity, but as denoting the unlimited range of 
 physical nature, out of which all things visible come into 
 being, and into which they fall by decay. Worlds, he thought, 
 spring out innumerable in youth from that mighty bosom, 
 and into it fall again, converted once more to that enduring 
 seminal element which itself changes not, however mutable 
 its developments. The earth, he supposed, was a globe, 
 placed midmost the " vasty deep " as a centre ; the moon, 
 he had learned, shone by a false light, borrowing her splen- 
 dour from the sun. The sun was so vast as to be at 
 least no smaller than the earth, and was composed of the 
 purest fire. 
 
 No ignoble conception this of the physical framework of 
 the universe ; inadequate only, if it should seek to supplant 
 the ethical consciousness of the meaning and divineness of 
 life. There are two attempted solutions of the problem of 
 human existence: man's nature is matter's supreme secretion; 
 or he is a spiritual entity, fitting itself with the best suit of plasm 
 that is available, and making of it not only clothing fit for the 
 terrestrial life, but even an individualized shape and beauty, 
 and an instrument for many purposes and passions. Anaxi- 
 mandros shows his preference for the former blunt hypothesis, 
 when he defines the origin of animal life as taking place in 
 moisture, the creatures being covered with prickly coats, which 
 later are ruptured, when the animals pass to existence in a 
 drier state, and man develops from them ; his proof being 
 that other animals speedily find pasture for themselves, while 
 man, for a lengthened period from his birth, requires constant 
 nursing. He could not therefore have been kept alive in the 
 beginning of things, and must be the descendant of fishes, 
 which, like whales, must have learned to suckle their young 
 before being cast upon the shore to learn dry-land existence.
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 251 
 
 This sage also taught the use of a sundial, and the meaning 
 of the phases of the moon. 
 
 Anaximandros is accounted the first who made public a 
 concise statement of his views and opinions upon the nature 
 of things, a course which had been foreign to the etiquette of 
 the time. Previously, these speculations were reserved for 
 private discussion amongst the sages, or formed the stock-in- 
 trade of the schools and the matter of the oral tradition. 
 
 The following may be quoted from the very few fragments 
 that remain of the works of Anaximandros : " All things that 
 exist are either the beginning, or derived from the beginning ; 
 of the infinite however there is no beginning, for otherwise it 
 would have a termination. It is, moreover, uncreate and 
 incorruptible, by reason of being the beginning; for that 
 which comes into being must needs come to ending, and ter- 
 mination is a property of all the corruptible." 
 
 Anaximenes, a reputed disciple of Anaximandros, instead 
 of finding the primordial something in the unnamed infinite, 
 took it to reside in eternal, infinite air. Our soul, because it 
 is air, guards and rules us, and the whole universe is begirt by 
 spirit and air. Limitless in its kind, this creative air is 
 bounded by such things as are produced of it. All things are 
 made of air that is become dense, or made rare. The gods he 
 regarded not as the authors of air, but as themselves sprung 
 from it. 
 
 Anaxagoras was a sage of an uncompromising stamp. Of 
 noble birth, he relinquished his patrimony to travel in pursuit 
 of knowledge, and when he returned from his wanderings and 
 found his possessions lying waste, he said, " I should not have 
 been safe myself if those had not perished." When his 
 relations blamed him for neglect of his estate, he replied, 
 " Why, then, do you not take care of it ? " When he had 
 made his final choice to give up the cares of worldly life, and 
 to devote himself to philosophic study, and had decided to 
 leave even politics to others whose minds were more decidedly
 
 252 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 bent upon busy affairs, he was reproached for having no 
 affection for his country. His reply shows how large his 
 estate and province was, and how he felt himself to be a 
 member of a humanity that reaches beyond the markets of 
 commodities and the arenas of power. He said, pointing the 
 while up to heaven as the symbol of that life of ours that 
 stretches beyond the merely mundane, " Be silent, for I have 
 the greatest affection for my country." We must be careful 
 not to confound a saying like this with the same words if 
 uttered to-day. When said, it might have come fresh from 
 the deep well of profound conviction. Now, it would be 
 borrowed, and possibly have degenerated into a merely senti- 
 mental and superficial, or canting expression. Real feeling, 
 true emotion, ever finds a perennial freshness of speech. 
 
 Anaxagoras came to Athens when a young man, and 
 studied and taught there for a long period, numbering among 
 his hearers Pericles, Socrates, and Euripides. 
 
 In natural philosophy the doctrines are ascribed to him, 
 that wind is due to local rarefaction of air by the sun ; that 
 the rainbow is the effect of the reflection of solar rays from a 
 rain cloud ; that the moon is an opaque body, illumined by 
 the sun; and that the primary elements of everything were 
 founded on similarity of parts, the beginning of any substance 
 being a mingling or cohesion, the end a separation, of parts. 
 He practised astronomy, calculated eclipses, travelled into 
 cultured Egypt for improvement, and used to say that he 
 preferred a grain of wisdom to heaps of gold. 
 
 In metaphysical philosophy he abandoned the petty 
 systems of his predecessors, and instead of regarding some 
 elementary form of matter as the origin of the universe, he 
 taught that mind was the principle of motion, and that 
 Supreme Intelligence, distinct from the visible world, imparted 
 form and order to what would otherwise be the chaos of 
 nature. 
 
 Strange to say, these innovations afforded the Athenians
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 253 
 
 a pretext for indicting Anaxagoras on the ground of impiety, 
 the very quality that he would seem to have been trampling 
 upon. There was, however, probably the bias of political 
 faction underneath the impeachment, owing to the connection 
 of Anaxagoras with Pericles, who belonged to a definite 
 political party. When news was brought him of his condem- 
 nation to death, and at the same time, as with Job, the news 
 arrived of the death of his children, he said, " Nature has long 
 since pronounced the same condemnation on both them and 
 me ; " and of his children he specially said, " I knew that I 
 had become the father of mortals." 
 
 When he was thrown into prison for his opinions, and was 
 awaiting judgment, Pericles is alleged to have come forward 
 and challenged accusation against him respecting his course 
 of life an interesting example of discrimination between 
 freedom of thought and licence of life. 
 
 Anaxagoras is said to have been the first to read the 
 Homeric poems, not as the literal accounts of heroes which 
 they seem to be, but as allegoric pictures, not only of virtue 
 and justice, but of the processes and vestiges of order in 
 nature. When he was dying, the governors of the city asked 
 him what he would like to have done for him, and he replied 
 begging the favour that they would keep the anniversary of 
 his death as a play day for children. This happy suggestion 
 was followed, and the Anaxagoria were held as a festival of 
 recreation. 
 
 Something of his doctrines we may gather from fragments. 
 He regarded plants as possessed of soul or intelligence after 
 their kind, as beings endowed with life. 
 
 Sleep, he taught, was an affection, not of the soul, but of 
 the body. 
 
 " Everything but mind contains parts of universal matter ; 
 mind itself is infinite and its own master, and is combined 
 with nothing, but alone is itself of itself." 
 
 What are left of his teachings are mostly physical specu-
 
 254 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 lations : we turn therefore to such suggestive sayings of 
 his as that uttered when he saw the prodigious tomb of 
 Mausolus, " A costly tomb is an image of a petrified estate." 
 
 When death in a foreign land was spoken of, as a matter 
 of grief, he made comfort of the fact that, " The road to the 
 other side of the grave is the same from every place." The 
 same thought is given in the Anthology, as of uncertain 
 authorship : " The road down to Hades is straight, whether 
 you go from Athens or depart from Meroe, a corpse. Let it 
 not vex you that you have died at a distance from your 
 country. There is one wind that carries you from everywhere 
 to Hades." There is not a very dissimilar epigram attributed 
 to Plato, referring to the position of the underworld. 
 
 Xenophanes, a philosophic writer in hexametric verse and 
 elegiac couplets, who lived about the close of the sixth 
 century before our era, was iconoclastic, a great protestant 
 against the popular religion, defaced as no doubt it was by 
 polytheistic corruptions. His objections to accepting the 
 Olympian deities as perfect divine ideals are reasonable and 
 true : 
 
 " Sad things are ascribed to the gods by Homer and 
 Hesiod, such as would be shame and disgrace among men ; 
 adulteries, deceits, thefts, and iniquities." 
 
 His own ideal is a higher one, holding " One God, among 
 gods and man supreme, neither in body nor spirit like 
 mortals." 
 
 He protests against anthropomorphism. His conception 
 of deity is rather of an immovable principle of physical life 
 than a spiritual source of love. A sort of blue infinite vault 
 was God, a spherical form, remaining in the same state, re- 
 quiring never to move from place to place, moving all things 
 without effort of mind. This universal being could see and 
 hear, but was without the very symbol of life, respiration ; 
 and was in all its parts intellect and wisdom and eternity. 
 But Xenophanes said, " Surely never hath been, nor will be, a
 
 THEISM AXD ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 255 
 
 mortal well knowing such matters I treat, of the gods and 
 the all. Though by chance he may utter the true and the 
 perfect, it is not of knowledge ; opinion presides over all 
 things." 
 
 The argument against taking the finite human form as a 
 representation of deity is cogently put, as follows : 
 
 " Mortals opine that gods are created like unto themselves, 
 and endowed with perception, voice, and form like their own. 
 If oxen or lions had hands, whereby they could depict and do 
 works like men, horses would portray forms of gods like 
 horses, oxen like oxen, each making representations of bodies 
 just like their own." 
 
 Perhaps the criticisms of Xenophanes were rather frigidly 
 intellectual ; a lover of the poetic deity of the rainbow might 
 rebel against being told he must confine himself to the scientific 
 
 fact 
 
 " That which men call Iris, it is but a cloud, 
 In purple and crimson, and pallor of green." 
 
 Xenophanes possessed a spice of humour ; when Empe- 
 dokles said to him that the wise man was undiscoverable, he 
 replied, "Very likely, for it takes a wise man to discover a 
 wise man." 
 
 G. H. Lewes who had not passed away when the follow- 
 ing quotation was made from his work on philosophy gives 
 a rather enthusiastic account of Xenophanes : 
 
 " He wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist. . . . He lived 
 poor, and died poor. But he could dispense with riches, 
 having within him treasures inexhaustible : his soul was 
 absorbed in the contemplation of grand ideas, and his vocation 
 was the poetical expression of those ideas. He had no pity for 
 the idle and luxurious superstitions of his time ; he had no 
 tolerance for the legends of Homer, defaced as they were by 
 the errors of polytheism. He, a poet, was fierce in the combat 
 he perpetually waged with the first of poets not from petty 
 envy, not from petty ignorance, but from the deep sincerity
 
 256 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 and enthusiasm of reverence. He who believed in one God, 
 supreme in power, goodness, and intelligence, could not 
 witness without pain the degradation of the Divine in the 
 common religion. Alive to the poetic beauty of the Homeric 
 fables, he was also keenly alive to their religious falsehood." 
 
 There may be very different reasons why philosophers 
 are sometimes obscure. A very obvious cause is that their 
 thought does not always run clear : but this will not account 
 for studied obscurity, parabolism, or paradox. It is no doubt 
 a fact that a great thought, if passed through a narrow and 
 vulgar mind, is shorn of its noble proportions, clouded over as 
 to its deepest meanings, dwarfed, distorted and made common- 
 place. It is possible to imagine a thinker so disgusted at 
 seeing the far-flying birds of his mind taken hold of by rude 
 hands, and set to strut about with clipped wings in the guise 
 of farm-yard fowls, that he should prefer to give them no 
 feet by which to alight among the dwelling places of the 
 grovelling multitude. Leaving to others to be, if they will, 
 the " wing of unwandering birds," he makes straight for the 
 ether, clearing a glorious track in the full delight of unchecked, 
 unlimited energy, and leaving to him to follow who can dare 
 to fly. 
 
 Upon Herakleitos was bestowed the nickname of the" dark 
 master," by men of his own race ; and, as symbolism is in 
 part conventional, and dependent like language itself upon a 
 concurrence of acceptation, we may expect it to be difficult to 
 penetrate to the inner secret of his utterances now. 
 
 Herakleitos was pre-eminently an idealist, so far unsuited 
 to grapple with practical life and its compromises, so far from 
 being able to share the satisfaction with which the worse than 
 even the second-best is greeted in the world, that the con- 
 templation of the lives of men inspired him with sadness, and 
 even made him weep. He must also have fallen into some 
 degree of pessimism, for, when requested to make laws for 
 the inhabitants of his native city Ephesus, he refused on the
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 257 
 
 ground that the city was already committed to a polity, and 
 that an altogether vicious one. He had probably seen places 
 and emoluments played for under the guise of policy in the 
 game of worldly life, and, as the story runs, after his refusal 
 to make laws, he retired with some children and began to 
 play at dice with them. When the townsmen came round him, 
 he said, " Wherefore marvel you, folk of the basest ? Is it not 
 better to do this, than to turn to public affairs along with you?" 
 
 Of an ancient royal house, to which belonged the founder 
 of Ephesus, he relinquished to his brother all his titles and 
 privileges, retaining to himself thus the independence of a 
 lofty spirit, as the truest and best of royal prerogatives. 
 
 His satire is of a scathing kind. The Ephesians had 
 banished Hermodoros, a friend of his, because his life and 
 example filled them with shame, and they desired to be all on 
 a footing of equality in profligacy of conduct. Herakleitos 
 said, " The Ephesians deserve to be all put to death in their 
 prime, and those who are younger to be banished, such of 
 them as have thrust out Hermodoros, the best man among 
 them, with the words, Let none of us be pre-eminently good, 
 and if any one be so, let it be elsewhere and among other 
 persons." 
 
 The manifest intention of Herakleitos so to express him- 
 self that only those should penetrate the enigma of his style 
 who could grasp the fulness of his thought, brought its natural 
 consequence in the jealous indignation of those who could 
 not comprehend him. The vulgar mind loves to believe that 
 it possesses all things, and shades off all that is beyond its 
 apprehension into a twilight of obscurity and unimportance. 
 When a sage presents a casket as containing a pearl that 
 only a sage can discover, the vulgar mind receives an affront 
 something is being concealed from it. The critics revenged 
 themselves on Herakleitos by telling absurd stories about 
 him, and attacking him with nicknames and opprobrious 
 epithets. 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Our philosopher, at war with the compromising world, 
 which even his tears could not inspire with an effort towards 
 a higher standard, appears to have become something of a 
 misanthrope. His place of residence was a mountainous 
 retreat, his food the grasses and plants of the district ; medi- 
 tation became his life. Unfortunately, such a manner of 
 existence brought him to a dropsy, of which it is not certain 
 whether he died or no. He is said to have humorously 
 asked the physicians, in reference to his complaint, whether 
 they could bring a drought out of wet weather ; and to have 
 shut himself up in a shippen and covered his body with the 
 droppings, forestalling, in his effort to produce perspiration, 
 the doctrine of modern advocates of hot-air bathing. 
 
 Herakleitos must have found his way to deeper springs of 
 life than his worldly minded compatriots knew of to make 
 him express a thought thus : " Abundant learning does not 
 form the mind, . . . there is one wisdom, which consists in 
 knowing that inner will which is able to regulate everything 
 throughout all." 
 
 To the political intriguer, the wire-puller of a corrupted 
 power, what interest was there likely to be in such a concep- 
 tion of the divine order which underlies all things, although 
 often so deeply overlaid with confusion, or in the most philo- 
 sophical dream of a perfect standard, to be approximated to as 
 closely as the great poet makes idea and form correspond ? 
 What wonder that the writings of Herakleitos remained long 
 in the Temple of Diana, where they were deposited, until an 
 interpreter came ? And then it was said of the book that one 
 needed to be a pearl diver not to be drowned in it. A sect, 
 however, arose in consequence of the reputation it achieved, and 
 bore the name of the author. Of his style it is said, " Some- 
 times in his treatise he expresses himself with brilliancy and 
 clearness, so that the most stupid can easily understand and 
 receive an elevation of soul ; while his conciseness and weighty 
 power of speech are incomparable ! "
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 259 
 
 We need not dwell upon the cosmogonical doctrines of 
 Herakleitos. He regarded a primeval fiery force as the main- 
 spring of all life by its intrinsic power, and all things as in 
 motion by actions and reactions through its energy. This 
 primary fire is deity, and all existing things are harmonized 
 and made to agree together by opposite tendencies. War or 
 discord is the parent of life with its vicissitudes, peace or 
 concord leads to a conflagration which terminates a cycle ; 
 and either is alike in harmony with fate. 
 
 We may judge what Greece owed to her philosophers by 
 calculating the steadying effect upon a rude people of such 
 maxims as this : " The people ought to fight for law as for 
 their city wall." 
 
 But no doubt the style of Herakleitos was too fine for the 
 comprehension of the generality, as, for instance, when he 
 says : " Whatever is said in the presence of listeners without 
 comprehension, is a testimony that people can be present and 
 absent at once." 
 
 Some minds have an inability to appreciate metaphor. In 
 the year of grace 1885, a man applies to a Clerkenwell magis- 
 trate for protection, " going in fear of his life," because he had 
 received a letter : " I give you fair warning that if I find you 
 aspersing my character in any way ; if you are worth powder 
 and shot, I will make you pay for it." 
 
 The following brings before us the unworldly recluse gazing 
 on the passions of men, as something outside himself : " Those 
 who search for gold dig a great deal of soil, and find merely a 
 little metal." 
 
 The symbolic style seems to be natural to unearthly com- 
 munications all the world over. Herakleitos recognizes the 
 genius of parable when he says : " The king whose oracle is 
 in Delphi, neither speaks out, nor conceals, but gives significant 
 indications." 
 
 In the following passages is much suggestiveness : 
 
 " No one twice can step into the selfsame stream, or twice
 
 260 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 catch mortal nature in one particular state ; but the sharpness 
 and fleetness of change is dispersing and again gathering it 
 together, or rather there is no former or latter [backwards or 
 forwards, upstream or downstream], but simultaneously it 
 forms and falls away, approaches and recedes. Wherefore, 
 that which is born of it never arrives at a consummation in 
 absolute existence, because of the fact that creation never 
 either leaves off or stands still." 
 
 " Though men step into the selfsame rivers, the waters 
 stream onward different and different again." 
 
 " The way above and below is one." 
 
 The sense of Herakleitos of an essential stability of things, 
 such as makes the circumstances of an actual moment a detail 
 only, is humorously manifested as follows : " If all things 
 that are, into smoke were turned, noses at least would sniff 
 what was. burned." A difficulty, however, must arise with 
 regard to the survival of the noses in a day in which " the 
 heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements 
 shall melt with fervent heat." This, however, Herakleitos 
 has met by urging that souls are possessed of scent and per- 
 ception in Hades. 
 
 The idea of Herakleitos of a general conflagration, a cyclic 
 conception of purification and resurrection, seems to be akin 
 to early Aryan doctrines ; it made his apophthegms in favour 
 with Clement of Alexandria and others of the Gnostic school, 
 who are fond of quoting him. The following are mystical 
 enough : 
 
 " Death means such things as we see when up and awake ; 
 dream such as we see when asleep." 
 
 " Both life and death are in our life and in our 
 death." 
 
 " Gods are mortal and men immortal, in the sense of living 
 the others' death and dying the others' life." 
 
 " There await dead men such things as they neither hope 
 nor think."
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 261 
 
 Bacon quotes with favour a maxim from Herakleitos, of 
 which the following passages are the original : 
 
 " When a man is drunk, he is led by a beardless boy, 
 tottering, and does not know whither he is going, having a 
 wet soul." 
 
 " The dry light is the best soul, kindling fire throughout 
 the body, as lightning through a cloud." 
 
 There is a reminiscence of these words of Herakleitos in 
 Clement of Alexandria, when he says (Paedag., ii. 2) : " Thus 
 shall our soul be pure and dry and luminous ; for the dry 
 soul is the wisest light and the best, and thus, too, it is fit for 
 contemplation, and is not humid with the exhalations that rise 
 from wine and form a mass like a cloud." 
 
 The following opens out deep thought : there is no morality 
 in nature, but in that which wields nature : " The merely 
 human character is without essential morals, but the divine 
 possesses them." 
 
 Here, again, is the peculiar obscurity of Herakleitos : 
 " Man at night kindles a light for himself; but at his death 
 is quenched. While he is alive he touches upon one who is 
 dead, in his sleep ; as awake, if he shuts his eyes he touches 
 upon one who is asleep." 
 
 " A foolish man heard from a spirit (daimon), just in the 
 same manner as a child from a man." That is, one may pre- 
 sume, without comprehension. 
 
 " Herakleitos, as having effected something great and 
 holy, said : I have sought the meaning of myself, and that 
 ' know thyself ' would seem to be the divinest thing in the 
 literature of Delphi." 
 
 " Listening not to me, but to reason, it is wise to allow 
 that all are the development of one." 
 
 " They know not how that which differs agrees with itself ; 
 just as there is a contrary harmony of lyre and bow." 
 
 " Poor witnesses unto men are the eyes and ears of those 
 who have barbarous souls." In other words, the senses are
 
 262 THE FA THERS OF JESUS. 
 
 fallible, unless a reasonable mind is acting behind them to 
 steady them. 
 
 " All things are full of souls and spirits (daimons)." 
 We have quoted but few of the fragments of Herakleitos, 
 for some seem imperfectly recorded, and are indeed difficult 
 to follow. And the modern mind is not quite so readily 
 appreciative and charitable as Euripides is said to have been, 
 when, in replying to the question what he thought of the 
 dark master's works, he said that what he understood was 
 noble, and he thought that even what he failed to understand 
 was noble also. 
 
 An epigram which Diogenes Laertius quotes as having 
 been written upon him is as follows : 
 
 " Be not too hasty skimming o'er the book 
 Of Herakleitos ; 'tis a difficult road, 
 For mist is there, and darkness hard to pierce, 
 But if you have a guide who knows his system, 
 Then everything is clearer than the sun." 
 
 The name of Parmenides reminds us that in our brief 
 review of Greek wisdom-lovers we are reaching the age of 
 Pythagoras, who, however, is of too large a presence to include 
 in a group and must occupy a chapter to himself. Parmenides, 
 as a youth, heard the words of old Xenophanes, but it was to 
 the Pythagoreans that he afterwards became addicted. He 
 was of noble family and of great wealth, living in splendour^ 
 and disposed towards a political career ; but the society of two 
 poor and virtuous Pythagoreans led him to withdraw to some 
 extent from public life, and to embrace the tranquil career of 
 the seeker after wisdom. To one of these gentle students he 
 felt so grateful for his own introduction to the sacred recesses 
 of philosophy, that when Diochartes, the Pythagorean, died, 
 Parmenides erected to his memory a shrine, such as was dedi- 
 cated to heroes. The withdrawal of Parmenides from political 
 labours was not absolute ; certain laws which he made for his 
 native town of Elea were so good that the magistrates annually
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 263 
 
 swore in the citizens to the observance of them. These were 
 days when philosophy was young in the districts to which 
 Greece was a centre, and it was a grateful task, when it was 
 not a dangerous one, to sow the seeds of knowledge, which 
 thinker after thinker was struggling to effect wherever circum- 
 stances afforded opportunity, introducing to the remotest cities 
 higher ideals of life and the virtues of civilized order. 
 
 Parmenides wrote of philosophy in verse, which seems not 
 its proper vehicle, for abstract thought and the picturesque 
 imagery of poetic visions do not readily come into unity. 
 Prose writing was, however, not yet very common in Greece, 
 and it was not until afterwards that poetry and prose occu- 
 pied well-marked provinces, the lyrist, the idyllist and the 
 dramatist occupying the one, and the historian and the philo- 
 sopher the other. 
 
 The muse of Parmenides thus addresses him : 
 
 " O boy, by immortal consorts of thy chariot companied, 
 On horses that bear thee drawing nigh to our home, 
 Good cheer, if it be not ill fate forth sent thee to wander 
 This way (for 'tis far from the worn tracks of mortals) ; 
 But justice and right. Thou hast need to learn all things, 
 Both precision of heart for truth that is full of persuasion, 
 And mortal opinions, wherein a true faith is not found. 
 But at any rate learn this much, how things in their seeming 
 Thou must warily prove, by finding all thoroughfares through them. 
 
 " Come now, I will tell thee, thou giving good ear to my word, 
 What ways of enquiry alone there are to be minded of : 
 The one, the existence, and how non-existence exists not, 
 The way of persuasion, for truth stands close on the threshold ; 
 The other, there is and there must be a thing of nonentity ; 
 I tell it thee plainly, this is an incredible road ; 
 For that which is not, neither mind nor can word e'er attain it, 
 It cannot be reached. To think and to be are identical." 
 
 Ambiguous, hesitating mortals with fluctuating minds, who 
 confuse being and not being, and whose way is doubtful and 
 retrograde, these the sage is to avoid : 
 
 " 'Tis to me of no personal moment, 
 Whence I spring, being bound to get thither again."
 
 264 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Of multiplex science he is also to beware, the plying of 
 sightless eyes, deaf ears, and a tongue ; but is to judge by 
 reason. But Parmenides lands himself in merely metaphysi- 
 cal subtleties, such as, " How can be hereafter a future exist- 
 ence, or how should there have been existence before ? If 
 there were, it is not in being, nor is it in being if it is but to 
 be in the future : so its birth is destroyed, and its death 
 incredible. . . . Being is not without end, nor is it lacking of 
 aught, for, if it were, it would lack all things." 
 
 A Daimon governs the universe, but with Parmenides the 
 word means no more than Fate, such as forces man to 
 woman and woman to man ; he seems to have studied the 
 physical world and to have found therein all of what he calls 
 being, intellect the power of it, and all else nonentity, and 
 therefore only an emptiness, and to be let alone. Things 
 merely absent, however, are not nonentity, and can be made 
 present in the mind and held there firmly for contemplation. 
 
 Epicharmos unites the apparently not very congruous 
 qualifications of Pythagorean philosopher and comic poet. 
 He is even credited with being the inventor of comedy, that 
 is, of the Greek development of comedy. He is said to have 
 given to comedy a dignified and poetic form, and to have 
 raised it from mere bon-mots and facetice to something nearer 
 the level of mind in which a wise man might take delight. 
 In other words, he instituted high comedy, as opposed to 
 low. The history of his turning to it is interesting. He 
 believed that of all disciplinary pursuits philosophy was the 
 queen, the sole master of life and expeller of vices. But the 
 ruling despot of the day stood in the way of public profession 
 of the Pythagorean tenets, so Epicharmos brought his poetic 
 faculty to his aid, and took to the stage as a means for bring- 
 ing the teachings of his master in philosophy before the world 
 with safety. In framing his comedies, he took care to open 
 out in fabling manner the causes of good and evil, and to lay 
 bare the manners and minds of men even to their most secret
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 265 
 
 recesses, and this in a mode in which the excellence of the 
 doctrine spoke for itself, and the charm of the style softened 
 the gravity of the utterance. 
 
 , Giving something to please the senses and tickle the 
 humour of men, he at the same time insinuated an appeal 
 to the eyes of the mind. As he says 
 
 " Mind sees, mind hears, all else is deaf and blind." 
 
 His humorous description of going home from a banquet 
 is worthy of Hogarth's pencil, as well as his tirade against a 
 chattering extravagant wife, whom he describes as " an orna- 
 mental misfortune." 
 
 He reminds us of the satire of the Hebrew Isaiah of the 
 Return, when he says in one of his comedies 
 
 " From any log may be made both a dog-collar and a god." 
 
 We may imagine the character in the comedy who should 
 plausibly urge : " A mortal must give his mind to mortal 
 things, not to immortal ; " and a play written to illustrate the 
 maxim, " His disposition is man's good daimon and his bad," 
 might be discovered, and found to be not unlike Macbeth. 
 
 The following might have been meant to apply to all 
 morbid people, pessimists and proselytizing crotchet-mon- 
 gers : 
 
 " You are no lover of your species, 
 You have a disease, and are glad when you give it." 
 
 Some of Shakespeare's broad, fearless, and equal accept- 
 ance of real life and ghostly life may be seen in the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 "It was compounded, then dissolved away, 
 And thither whence it came, it went again, 
 Earth unto earth, and spirit up on high, 
 Which is there grievous of these facts ? Not one." 
 
 Perhaps Epicharmos found he could compose comic busi- 
 ness best in sunny daylight, with the real world buzzing
 
 266 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 around and making unconscious comedy-scenes ; but when 
 the bodily faculties are more stilled, and the hidden nature 
 wakens, the faculties are differently balanced ; he says : 
 
 " All serious things are best found out by night." 
 
 The following are among the extant fragments of Epichar- 
 mos : 
 
 " If a pure mind thou hast, 'tis sure 
 In thy whole body thou art pure." 
 
 " A pious life's man's greatest stay, 
 And best provision for his way." 
 
 " Endowed with pious mind, you will not, when you've died, 
 Suffer aught ill ; the spirit in heaven above will abide.' 
 
 " As destined long to live, as but a while, 
 So set thy mind." 
 
 Of this he has to share the authorship with Bias and Demo- 
 kritos, among the fragments attributed to whom it is found in 
 a slightly varied form. 
 
 " Wretch, covet not luxuries, lest hardships fall to your lot." 
 
 " Nothing evades the Divine ; this it behoves thee to know, 
 He is our overseer, there is nought God cannot do." 
 
 " All the good things the gods sell us for our labour." 
 
 " I experience a sense of suffocation when any one speaks 
 evil words to bring noble-mindedness to nought, and is 
 ignoble in his own manners. What connection is there 
 between a blind man and a looking-glass ? " 
 
 " There is in man reasoning ; and a divine reason : 
 Reason is implanted in man to provide for life and sustenance, 
 But divine reason gives an universal eye to the arts, 
 Teaching men always that which it is advantageous to do. 
 It was not man that discovered art, but God brought it, 
 And man's reason derives its origin from the Reason Divine (Logos)." 
 
 Diogenes of Apollonia is another of those who on the 
 physical plane have sought the origin of the universe. He 
 came to the conclusion that, as air seems to penetrate every-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 267 
 
 where, and nothing is withheld from it, air is the creative 
 material. In warm air he found the basis, or rather the 
 parent, of all life ; without discerning that, unless he could 
 account for the presence of air, or of heat in it, his speculative 
 physics had not yet brought him to the discovery of the 
 supreme origin of life. The breath of life that fills our lungs, 
 and the manifold fire that makes warmth and growth and 
 colour, are indeed the noblest factors in created existence, 
 but not the most pregnant wave of air, or keenest ray of 
 light, or pulse of heat, can reveal the whole secret of life. 
 Nature is voiceful, but not explanatory. 
 
 Diogenes says : " To me it seems that what men call air is 
 that which contains intelligence, and that thereby all things 
 are controlled, and it rules all things. From this it seems to 
 me that mind proceeds, penetrating all things, constituting 
 all things, and dwelling in everything. For there is nothing 
 in existence which is not a partaker in air, while nothing else 
 can be found which has to an equal degree that relation of 
 partaker ; but the modes are many both of air itself, and of 
 intelligence. For air is of many modes, hotter, and colder, 
 and dryer, and moister, and more stationary, and subject to 
 sharper motion, and has many other dissimilarities with end- 
 less varieties both of smell and colour. And the soul of all 
 living creatures is the same, being air, hotter indeed than the 
 outer air in which we live, but much colder than that about 
 the sun." It is to be feared that Diogenes has not here quite 
 fulfilled the first condition of his treatise, in which he says, 
 " It appears to me that he who begins any treatise is bound 
 to lay down principles about which there can be no dispute, 
 and that his exposition of them ought to be simple and 
 dignified." 
 
 Archelaos, a pupil of Anaxagoras, bent upon physical 
 speculations, such as whether animals are generated out 
 of hot mud, meddled with moral philosophy so far as to 
 affirm that there is no justice or baseness in nature, but that
 
 268 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 those qualities depend upon opinions and positive institu- 
 tions ; all actions are thus indifferent until law pronounces 
 upon them a doctrine which the conscience of man can 
 scarcely acquiesce in without uneasy doubts. Nevertheless 
 there is enough of merely conventional morality in the world 
 to mislead a philosopher who forgets to inquire for a moment 
 what is that glimmering consciousness which prompts to any 
 moral system whatever, however blundering and confused. 
 
 Melissos conjoined literary studies with the serious pro- 
 fession of arms, and was distinguished in both. He shows 
 a laudable clearness of logic in the treatment of metaphy- 
 sical questions : " If being be infinite, it is one ; for if there 
 were two, they could not both be infinite, but would have 
 boundaries against each other. ... If it be one, it is also 
 immovable . . . nothing beside the ens existed from all 
 eternity, therefore, it cannot be moved." Melissos has be- 
 queathed us no ethical lessons, and little but clear, cold 
 reasonings. 
 
 Of the philosopher Demokritos it is difficult to write, so 
 contradictory are the accounts and theories respecting him. 
 He is a fine and suggestive moralist, as serious as any other, 
 and yet tradition has given him the name of the Mocker, as 
 of one who found sport in the follies of mankind, in opposi- 
 tion to Herakleitos, who was nicknamed the Weeper. 
 
 Demokritos is written down a Sadducee, on grounds much 
 too slight, and probably erroneous. Lucian tells a story that, 
 when the philosopher was busy writing in a cave at night, 
 some youths dressed up as ghosts to frighten him ; but he 
 remained quite unmoved, and without even looking at them 
 bid them end their game. From this it is deduced that it 
 was his conviction that when souls passed out of bodies they 
 were nought. A better conclusion is that the philosopher 
 very quickly recognized that whether ghosts existed or not, a 
 pack of masking boys were not of ghostly order. The man 
 who one day saluted a young damsel who came with his
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 269 
 
 friend Hippokrates, with " Good morning, my maid," and the 
 next day changed his mode of salute to " Good morning, 
 madam," the girl having in the interval altered her state, was 
 not one likely to be deficient in closeness of observation, 
 or easily imposed upon by mountebanks. 
 
 The other reason for the traditional presumption that 
 Demokritos was a materialist is found in his physical theories, 
 to which we will afterwards refer. But, having regard to the 
 whole of his work that is left to us, it would seem more pro- 
 bable that Demokritos and Democrates are separate persons, 
 than to set up the theory that the more spiritual work of 
 Demokritos was done before his views had been developed 
 into materialism by physical research. This is indeed to 
 measure a steady old philosopher by the standard of the 
 mental fluctuations of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Demokritos was born in a little city of Thrace, probably 
 about the middle of the fifth century before our era. He was 
 the youngest son of a wealthy family, so wealthy that it was 
 able to entertain, not only King Xerxes, when, on his return 
 from Asia, he visited Abdera, but also, as the story goes, 
 his army. 
 
 When is father died, Demokritos divided the patrimony 
 with his two brothers, taking a smaller portion than the 
 others, because he wanted it in ready cash, as he proposed 
 to spend years in travel. These wanderings are described 
 with perhaps a tinge of boastfulness : " I have travelled over 
 the most ground of any man of my time, investigating the 
 most widely distant regions. I have seen the most skies and 
 lands, and listened to the largest number of learned men ; in 
 the setting together of lines, with the working out, no one has 
 surpassed me, not even those of the Egyptians who bear the 
 name of Harpedonaptai ; with these, moreover, I sojourned 
 during five years' absence from home." 
 
 Doubtless the Chaldeans were among those whom this 
 wanderer visited, but we cannot follow Lewes when in his
 
 270 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 "History of Philosophy" he says that Xerxes left some of 
 his Magi to instruct young Demokritos ; seeing that he fixes 
 the lad's birth at 460 B.C., while Xerxes died about four years 
 previously. 
 
 His story shows how thought in the ancient world was not 
 without its communications. Without the aid of printing, or 
 the power of steam, ideas travelled, for the scholar was eager 
 to carry them himself. 
 
 An interesting story is told by the Emperor Julian of 
 Demokritos, and Darius the successor of Xerxes. The king's 
 wife had died, and he was inconsolable. The philosopher 
 promised to restore her to life, if the all-powerful king would 
 provide him with certain necessaries. After some delay 
 Demokritos reported that he had everything prepared, with 
 one exception, which surely the king of all Asia could easily 
 provide : he required the names of three men who had never 
 experienced sorrow, to inscribe on the queen's tomb, when 
 she would return from the under-world. Darius could not 
 find one such man, and the moral of the story is obvious. It 
 is a pair to the story of the shirt of a happy man, which was 
 to be worn to bring back joy to a jaded king. When a happy 
 man at last was discovered, he turned out to be a vagrant, 
 who never wore such a thing as a shirt. 
 
 When Demokritos returned home from his prolonged 
 wanderings, he was reduced to the utmost destitution, having 
 consumed all that he took with him. But he had brought 
 home a vast stock of knowledge. For a time his brother 
 supported him, but he astonished the natives so much by 
 foretelling future events, meteorological or connected with the 
 harvest, that he soon became famous. There was a law, 
 however, that any one who had made away with his patrimony 
 should be denied funeral rites in his own country ; Demo- 
 kritos, therefore, to avoid calumny on this score, recited in 
 public his greatest work, as a tribute to the power of which 
 he was presented with a large sum of money, and honoured
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 271 
 
 by the erection of brazen statues. He was offered the highest 
 political position, but whether he accepted it is doubtful. 
 
 The remainder of his life was quietly passed in the study 
 of nature and of letters. He lived to a very advanced age, 
 and a story told about the manner of his death, if true, 
 evidences a marvellous unselfishness on his part. When he 
 seemed on the point of death, his sister was lamenting that 
 he would die during a festival, at which she did not wish to 
 be prevented from discharging her duties to the goddess. He 
 wished her good cheer, and ordered hot loaves to be brought 
 him each day, by applying which to his nostrils he succeeded 
 in keeping himself alive over the three days during which his 
 sister was busied in her religious observances. An epigram 
 upon him runs, that " he kept off Death, though present, for 
 three days, and entertained him with the steam of muffins." 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the commentators should 
 have found it hard to reconcile such noble sentences as the 
 following, with the mind of a narrow physicist, who had dis- 
 covered the secret spring of the universe to be atoms and a 
 vacuum : 
 
 " The felicity or infelicity of the soul resides not in flocks, 
 or in gold ; for the soul is the abode of Divinity." 
 
 " Evil springs up into men out of good, whensoever one 
 knows not how to administer the good things, or to support 
 them easily. It is not just, however, to reckon such among 
 evils, but amongst good things, for it is possible to use even 
 good things for evil." 
 
 " From whatever source there arise to us good things, 
 from the same we gather evil things also ; but from the evils 
 it is within our power to be free. Deep water, for instance, 
 is useful for many things, but it may have its evil side, too ; 
 for there is danger of getting drowned. For this the remedy 
 is found : it is to learn to swim." There is indeed here the 
 solution of the problem of life, in a nut-shell. 
 
 " The gods give unto men all good things, both of old and
 
 272 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 now, and not such things as are evil and hurtful and useless. 
 These indeed, neither of old nor now, do gods bestow upon 
 men, but men run upon them by blindness and ignorance of 
 mind." 
 
 The following belong to a plane of thought more in rela- 
 tion with everyday affairs : 
 
 " Many who seem to be friends are not so, and many who 
 seem not to be, are." 
 
 " Not every relation of yours is your friend, but those who 
 unite themselves with you for mutual advantage." 
 
 " As the sword cuts, so calumny separates friends." 
 
 " If you can do a good turn, do not delay, but give, know- 
 ing that no state of things is permanent." 
 
 " In prosperity it is easy to find a friend, but in adversity 
 the most difficult of all things." Time has shortened this to 
 the well-known proverb, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." 
 
 " To a wise man every land is viable, for the whole world 
 is the fatherland of a noble soul." 
 
 " Magnanimity lies in the mild tolerance of fault or failure." 
 
 " It is not fitting for instructed people to reason with un- 
 instructed, as it is not for sober people to argue with drunken." 
 
 " He who is about to rule others ought first to rule himself." 
 
 " Men have imaged a spectral form of Fortune as a pre- 
 text to cover their own imprudence ; for Fortune makes small 
 resistance to prudence, and the perspicacious soul gets the 
 better of most things in life." 
 
 " Shouldst thou open thyself interiorly, thou wilt find a 
 certain varied and impressionable storehouse and treasury of 
 evils, not of influx from without, but containing as it were, 
 native and indigenous sources, which vice lets loose, when 
 widespread and liberal to the passions." 
 
 The following may represent the ideas of Demokritos upon 
 education : 
 
 "The virtue which is proper to nature is corrupted by 
 easy indifference, while depravity is rectified by training ; easy
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 273 
 
 things escape the neglectful, whilst difficult things come with- 
 in the reach of diligence." 
 
 " Neither art nor science is to be reached without devotion 
 to learning." 
 
 " Nature and training are very near neighbours ; for though 
 training transforms a man, yet in that transformation it is 
 moulding a second nature." 
 
 " Youths who cannot willingly give themselves up to tasks, 
 will learn neither literature, nor music, nor athletics, nor what 
 contains the main part of virtue modesty ; for modesty 
 chiefly grows out of such things." 
 
 With all his love for education, Demokritos can have 
 been no pedant, or he would not have expressed himself as 
 follows : 
 
 " Those who possess varied erudition are sometimes alto- 
 gether lacking in mind." 
 
 " Abundance of sagacity, rather than quantity of learning, 
 is what one ought to strain for." 
 
 " There is such a thing as wisdom in youth and folly in 
 old men ; for time does not teach intelligence, while nature 
 herself is nurture in due season." 
 
 How thorough his principles were, the following will stand 
 for evidence : 
 
 " Even stories about vile deeds ought to be declined." 
 
 The daily newspaper had not become an institution in the 
 days of Demokritos. 
 
 " It is good not only to abstain from wrong, but never to 
 will it." 
 
 " Not only is he that does one wrong, a foe ; but he that 
 is minded to." 
 
 " Penitence for base deeds is the salvation of life." 
 
 Demokritos may have given Epikouros a hint of value to 
 
 him in arriving at a philosophy. Moderation in pleasure, and 
 
 symmetry of life, these are the ideal of Demokritos, and from 
 
 them, he avows, springs tranquillity of mind, while either lack 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 or surfeit creates disturbance. The philosophy is plausible, 
 but average human nature seems to require " the slings and 
 arrows " in view to keep it at its best. However, the modera- 
 tion signified by the philosopher is that arising from command 
 over one's self, and is a thing quite distinct from the unevent- 
 fulness of circumstance : "Where any one exceeds moderation, 
 the sweetest at once becomes least sweet." "The equal is 
 beautiful in everything ; but excess and deficiency appear to 
 me to be the reverse." 
 
 The following, as well as one or two sentences already 
 cited, might have come ^from the Buddhist Dhammapada : 
 " As medicine heals the diseases of the body, so wisdom frees 
 the soul from perturbations." 
 
 There is ethical beauty and loving truth in the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 " Men as we are, it beseems us not to laugh at, but to 
 grieve for, the calamities of men." 
 
 "A charitable man is he who looks not for return, but 
 deliberately purposes to do well." 
 
 " I count him who loves no one as loved by no one." 
 
 " He that inflicts wrong is more ill-starred than he that 
 suffers wrong." 
 
 " The laws would not prevent each person from living with 
 individual independence, unless one had a way of injuring 
 another." 
 
 "There is disease of house and of life, just as there is of 
 the bodily tabernacle." 
 
 Demokritos is ordinarily quoted as the author of the doc- 
 trine of atoms. Cicero regarded atoms as being, according to 
 this doctrine, indivisible particles of matter, the first element 
 of the universe. Not venturing to oppose so high an authority, 
 or the dictates of the whole German school, we will neverthe- 
 less see how the apophthegms of Demokritos will read, on the 
 hypothesis that he is a misunderstood prototype of Berkeley, 
 and not a materialist at all. The term employed by Demo-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 275 
 
 kritos, and usually translated atoms, is atomoi or atoma. 
 Leukippos, who is supposed to be the master of Demokritos, 
 taught that the universe, being infinite, is in part a plenum, 
 in part a vacuum, the former containing innumerable cor- 
 puscles or primary atoms. Let us suppose that Demokritos, 
 instead of being an adherent of this doctrine, which explains 
 nothing, and only touches the scaffolding of the physical 
 universe, relinquished the pursuit of the atom, or indivisible 
 thing, in nature, to the division of whose particles there would 
 appear to be no end, and found the true indivisible in the 
 mind of a living being, that is, in an individual. Aristotle, 
 it may be observed (Anal. Pr. 2, 27, 9, Part. An. I. 4, 4), 
 employs the term atoma in a sense of " individuals." 
 
 Quotation will now help us to judge whether Demokritos 
 has been persistently misunderstood or not. If we follow 
 his proposition that mind .is the only fact, and so say that 
 all sensation is subjective, then we must hold that the void, 
 or vacuum, is all that is not mind, that is to say, is the 
 apparent phenomenal universe, which is to be regarded as 
 objectively void and only a resulting appearance, the fact of 
 which is an impression made on the mind. This would be 
 a very different conception from the vacuum of Leukippos, 
 which was a sort of emptiness made for the atoms to sport in 
 and arrive at variety of form. 
 
 "Assuredly either nothing is true, or what is, is not 
 evident to us. While, however, sense-perception is entirely 
 due to an under-support of intellectual faculty, and this sense- 
 perception is an aberration, that which is made apparent is 
 of necessity true relatively to sense-perception." (/.<?. so far 
 as sense-perception is concerned, the phenomena are truly 
 seen ; the mind alone can detect how erroneous are the un- 
 corrected impressions which it receives through its sense- 
 faculty.) 
 
 G. H. Lewes translates the passage we have rendered 
 above so as to present a very different purport : " Demo-
 
 276 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 kritus says, that either nothing is true, or what is true is not 
 evident to us. Universally, in his system, the sensation con- 
 stitutes the thought, and, as at the same time it is but a 
 change [in the sentient being], the sensible phenomena (i.e. 
 sensations} are of necessity true." * If sensation did fully 
 constitute thought, we should be conscious of no lack 
 whatever. 
 
 Lewes, again, says that Demokritos, as a hypothesis to 
 explain perception, " supposed that all things were constantly 
 throwing off images of themselves (t'/SwXa), which, after as- 
 similating to themselves the surrounding air, enter the soul 
 by the pores of the sensitive organ. The eye, for example, 
 is composed of aqueous humours ; and water sees. But how 
 does water see ? It is diaphanous, and receives the image of 
 whatever is presented to it." 
 
 The account we have of the view entertained by Demo- 
 kritos respecting these eidola is probably a confused one, but 
 it seems to convey the notion of vague spiritual entities, which 
 can draw near to man and convey impressions to his mind : 
 
 " Demokritos says that there are certain eidola in pro- 
 pinquity to man, and that some of them are beneficent, others 
 maleficent ; wherefore he goes so far as to pray that he may 
 meet with propitious eidola. These beings are great and 
 monstrous, and not readily subject to corruption, though not 
 incorruptible. Moreover, they signify to men things that are 
 coming to pass, by making themselves seen and emitting 
 sound. Whence, when the ancients received an impression 
 of these very beings, they suspected them to be deity, on the 
 supposition of there being none other god beside these that 
 has an incorruptible nature." 
 
 Seeing that Demokritos believed in elemental beings who 
 could communicate subtly with man, it would be strange if 
 
 * It is well to give the original text : "Hroi ouflej/ elj/cu oArjftes % inTiv y" &Sri\ov. 
 "O\dis Se Sia rb viro\a(j.fidvfii> <pp6vt)aiv ft.lv T^V o.1fff)t)<nv, ravrriv 5' tlvai aAAotaxr*//, 
 rb <pa.iv6fjifvov Kara T^V a*i<rQi}<riv e u.vdyKi)s a\r)9fs elpcu (Aristotle, Metaphys. iv. 5)-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 277 
 
 he did not connect their influence with the problem of the 
 mode in which those impressions are received which appear 
 to come to us from external images. The title of one of his 
 books which are lost is, " Concerning eidolon, or concerning 
 foresight." The fact of such a title, coupled with his allu- 
 sions to eidola as individual beings of a shadowy aeonic 
 character, would seem to show that he had a very different 
 view of them from that presented by Lewes, of emanational 
 spectres being thrown off from things, as it were photographs 
 made in air. The word " eidolon " is of very indeterminate 
 signification even yet : in the following lines from " Dream- 
 land," Edgar Poe uses it in a sense not very unlike that of 
 Demokritos : 
 
 " By a route obscure and lonely, 
 Haunted by ill angels only, 
 Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, 
 On a black throne reigns upright, 
 I have reached these lands but newly 
 From an ultimate dim Thule 
 From a wild weird clime that lieth sublime 
 Out of SPACE, out of TIME." 
 
 The essential meaning of the word " eidolon " is visible 
 shape, and we are familiar with it in a limited signification in 
 the term " idol." 
 
 "Demokritos, in abrogating those things which are an 
 appearance to the perceptions of sense, goes so far as to say 
 that nothing of these appears in accordance with verity, but 
 only in accordance with opinion ; whereas the element of 
 underlying truth in things is the existence of individuals 
 (atomot) and a void. ' For,' says he, ' sweet is sweet because 
 conventionally so regarded, and bitter is so by convention- 
 ality ; heat, cold, colour, have their subsistence in opinion : 
 whereas in reality what exists is individuals (atomd) and 
 void.' 
 
 " In his ' Works in Support,' although undertaking to set 
 up the mastery of argument for the sense-perceptions, he is
 
 278 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 nevertheless found giving judgment against them. For he 
 says : ' We actually know nothing of exact truth, but per- 
 ceive something that changes according to the posture of the 
 body, both of things which fall across us and things which 
 press against us.' 
 
 " And again he says : ' In reality now, that we know not 
 whether each thing is such, or is not, has been often made 
 plain.' 
 
 " In his book concerning Ideas, ' Man ought to know,' he 
 says, ' by this rule, that he is many removes from real truth.' 
 And again : ' This reason assuredly proves, that in real truth 
 we know nothing respecting anything ; but share each in the 
 popular belief.' And further he says : ' And indeed it will 
 be plain, that to know in real truth of what each thing is, we 
 are quite at a loss.' 
 
 " In these works, indeed, he does away with almost every 
 kind of apprehensiveness, and only specially fastens on the 
 sense-perceptions. But in the Rules he says that there are 
 two kinds of cognition, the one through the sense-perceptions, 
 the other through the intellectual faculty. The cognition 
 through the intellectual faculty he brings down as genuine, 
 testifying to its credibility for the determination of truth ; 
 whereas he calls the cognition by the sense-perceptions ob- 
 scure, denying its unerringness for the investigation of truth. 
 I give what he says, word for word : ' Of cognition there are 
 two kinds, one genuine, the other obscure; to the obscure 
 belongs the whole group of sight, hearing, smell, taste, 
 touch ; while that is genuine which is distinctly separated 
 from this.' 
 
 " Then, preferring the genuine to the obscure cognition, he 
 adds a word thus : ' Whenever the obscure cognition can no 
 longer in its smaller degree either see, or hear, or smell, or 
 taste, or perceive by touch, why then one must resort to the 
 property which is more subtle.' " 
 
 The passage just given, with its quotations from Demo-
 
 THEISM AND ETHICS IN ANCIENT GREECE. 279 
 
 kritos, is found in the works of Sextos Empeirikos ; the 
 following is from Diogenes of Laerte: "Demokritos disre- 
 gards quiddities, where he says, What is cold is cold in 
 opinion ; hot, hot in opinion ; but individuals and void exist 
 in reality. And again : In reality, we know nothing, for 
 truth lies in a deep." 
 
 These are the reverse of what we might expect as the 
 dogmas of a confident atomist ; but misunderstanding of 
 Demokritos has been so general that we are afraid to add 
 to it. 
 
 It is possible that Demokritos is not the author of all of 
 "the following : 
 
 "The nobility of cattle lies in the fine strength of the 
 bodily frame, the nobility of man in the well disposedness of 
 the character." 
 
 " Beauty of body, without basis of mind, marks animal 
 nature merely." 
 
 " The harmony of man consists in making account of the 
 soul rather than of the body ; for a highly perfect soul gives 
 uprightness to a mean state of the tabernacle, whereas strength 
 of the carcase without rationality renders soul better no 
 whit." 
 
 " It is the mark of a divine mind to be always dwelling on 
 what is noble." 
 
 " The world is a scene, life a passage ; thou earnest, sawest, 
 and didst depart." 
 
 " The world is an estrangement ; life in it an interruption." 
 
 " Whatsoever things a poet writes when under inspiration 
 of holy spirit, are beautiful exceedingly." 
 
 If these apophthegms, however, some of which have not 
 fallen under suspicion of spuriousness, do not prove Demo- 
 kritos something more than a mere atomist, the title of one 
 of his lost works, " Concerning those that are in Hades," may 
 do so. We may pass by as fabulous the story that he put out 
 his eyes with a burning glass in order to become more intimately
 
 280 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 a student of the reasoning faculties through the minimizement 
 of the disturbances of the external senses ; the theory, how- 
 ever, he may perhaps have speculatively advanced. But if 
 he wrote of existence in Hades, either there are two of the 
 name, or Demokritos did not find the supreme source of life 
 in the molecule.
 
 ( 28l ) 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 
 
 IT is not certainly known whether an Athenian boy named 
 Aristocles, better known to the civilized world as Plato 
 (broad), earned his nickname from the burly size of his 
 shoulders, the width of his forehead, or the eloquent breadth 
 of his expositions. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that 
 a mystery should lie upon the name of one Pythagoras, who 
 lived over a century before him, and, although less widely 
 read by reason of having left us doubtful fragments instead 
 of unmutilated treatises, is at least as great a man. 
 
 If about a hero himself there is no obscurity though 
 indeed the world can generally make but little of him in his 
 own time mystery is wont to accumulate around him after he 
 is gone. In the case of Plato, whose ancestry went back in 
 the sword-line to the last king of Athens, and on the spindle 
 side to Solon the sage, wonder came out in fable, and gave 
 him a virgin mother, and god Apollo for his father.* The 
 relations of Pythagoras to our planet have almost as ethereal 
 a vagueness of outline. First, and almost incredibly (did we 
 not know another instance), seeing that he founded a sect 
 great in both politics and religion, no one knows with certainty 
 the date of his birth, or how long he lived. Calculators fix 
 
 * "The report was that Plato's mother, Perictione, was very beautiful, and that 
 Ariston endeavoured to violate her but did not succeed ; and that, after he had 
 desisted from his violence, he saw a vision of Apollo in a dream, in consequence 
 of which he refrained from approaching his wife until after she had brought forth " 
 (Diogenes Laertius, " Lives of Philosophers," Plato, i.). Plutarch also (Conviv., 
 viii. I, p. 715 E) refers to this dream of Plato's father.
 
 282 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 his birth variously from 640 to 570 years before our era, his 
 death from 550 to 466, allowing him thus a margin of life of 
 from twenty years to nearly a century and three-quarters. 
 We may roughly fix 575 to 495 as most probably containing 
 his period. With regard to his birth, almost the same story 
 is told of him as afterwards of Plato : 
 
 " Pythais, fairest of the Samian tribe, 
 Bore from embraces of the god of day, 
 Renowned Pythagoras, the friend of Zeus." 
 
 With respect to the meaning of the name Pythagoras, also, 
 there is some difference of opinion ; the theory has been 
 advanced, in view of his reputed travels in India and other 
 eastern countries, that it is of oriental origin. And the theory 
 is very plausible. Pythagoras is Sanskrit Budha, wisdom ; 
 and guwt, or venerable father, the title given in the " Institutes 
 of Menu " to the teacher who confers the benefit of sacred 
 learning. Or, it is Budha, wisdom, and the Greek agoreuo, to 
 explain, or announce. The first woman who entered the 
 order founded by Pythagoras, or, according to another 
 account, his wife, was Theano ; Sanskrit, Dhyana, devout 
 contemplation. And of this mystical marriage a daughter is 
 named Damo ; Sanskrit, DJiarma, virtue or practical morality. 
 Two early Pythagoreans also, the celebrated Damon and 
 Pythias, have names that fit in with the Sanskrit derivations. 
 So also does that of Pythanax, reputed mother of Theano. 
 Curiously enough, the root Pyth has its own sacredness in 
 Greece, as Budh in India. 
 
 Unfortunately for this alluring etymological hypothesis, 
 which is due to a distinguished Indian general officer, the 
 reduction of the proper names to Sanskrit words signifying 
 qualities, however seemingly applicable to the character of 
 the work of Pythagoras, can have no special reference to him. 
 Theano, whether originally derived from Sanskrit or not, is 
 a proper name in Homer, several centuries before the time of 
 Pythagoras ; and Pytho in Homer and Hesiod is the name
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 283 
 
 of the site of the Delphic oracle, with which the legend and 
 title of the Pythian Apollo are associated. From the simi- 
 larity of the names Pythagoras, PythaYs, Pythanax, Pythias, 
 it would seem most likely, however, that they are not simple 
 patronymics, but were introduced by the biographer of 
 Pythagoras for some symbolic purpose. lamblichos says that 
 the father of Pythagoras, Mnesarchos, was informed by the 
 oracle that his wife Parthenis (or virgin) would bring forth 
 a son of exceeding beauty and wisdom, a benefit to his race 
 in all pertaining to the life of men, through a rare prerogative 
 and divine gift. Thereupon, as the story runs, he named his 
 wife Pythais and her son Pythagoras, which might be supposed 
 to signify, Declared by the Pythian deity. " And indeed," 
 says lamblichos, "no one can doubt that the soul of 
 Pythagoras was sent to mankind from the empire of Apollo, 
 either being an attendant on the god, or co-arranged with him 
 in some other more familiar way ; for this may be inferred 
 both from his birth, and from the all various wisdom of his 
 soul." The latter quality is truly a fair reason for his having 
 proceeded from some sphere of divine quality, whether styled 
 Apollonian or not. But, as to the name Pythagoras, though 
 it may have been used with special significance in the case of 
 the philosopher, it appears to have been shared with several 
 more commonplace mortals of about the same period, among 
 them an athlete and trainer, a statuary, an orator, and a 
 physician. 
 
 The most generally adopted tradition is, that Pythagoras 
 was born in the island of Samos. Another account is that 
 he was a native of Tyre, or at least of Phoenician origin. The 
 trade of his father tends to countenance the story of Tyrian 
 race, for, according to some, he was an engraver of gems, 
 according to others, a rich merchant, both of which occupa- 
 tions might well have gone together, the quest of precious 
 stones and sale of valuable engraved gems necessitating 
 travel and a busy commercial life.
 
 284 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 His father's profession is thought to add probability to 
 the legends that Pythagoras himself visited many lands. He 
 might have been taken abroad by business for his father, and 
 at the same time have fed his inquiring mind with such know- 
 ledge as made it thirst for more. Miletos, Crete, Delphi, near 
 home, Phoenicia, Judea, Egypt, Persia, Babylon, India, Gaul, 
 abroad, he is said to have visited, making acquaintance with 
 learned priests, getting at their symbols and secrets, absorbing 
 into his mind their sacred lore, even becoming a partaker in 
 their rites. As we learn more of Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and 
 Buddhist teachings, we shall see more clearly how far 
 Pythagoras may have drawn from them. It will probably be 
 recognized that Greece had a great power of assimilation, and 
 that as from the strong but straitened sculptures of Egypt 
 and the intaglios of Phoenicia and Babylonia, she evolved her 
 own perfection of work in marble and gems, so also in the 
 province of philosophy she fostered into a new and developed 
 grace of form the thoughts of races before whom she was but 
 a child in point of antiquity. In the exquisite poetical ex- 
 pressions of her bards and sages, we may not always know to 
 how large an extent we are receiving, according to Bacon's 
 fine metaphor, " sacred relics, gentle whispers, and the breath 
 of better times, from the traditions of more ancient nations, 
 conveyed into the flutes of the Grecians." 
 
 Pythagoras was fortunate in his early life ; instead of his 
 mind being crushed by having to commit to memory burden- 
 some stores of detail, his education was one that fulfilled the 
 signification of the term, the leading out and expansion of the 
 young faculties. Development and grace formed the high 
 Greek ideal, and the boy who, in " the dim magnificence of 
 legends," was long-haired and beautiful as one under divine 
 inspiration, was instructed in gymnastics for his body, in the 
 music of the harp, and in painting from life, as exercises for 
 the spiritual and mental nature. With the lyre went the 
 verses of Homer, so that the inspiring suggestions of poetry
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 285 
 
 went hand in hand with the stricter training of musical art. 
 Afterwards came the study of philosophy under the great 
 sages of the time, and with a mind well tempered by such 
 training he resorted to the priests of the oracles to learn their 
 arcana. There is probably imaginative excess in the legends 
 told of his studies of the mysteries, for there is an evident 
 tendency to hero-worship on the part of his biographers. 
 But, as the practical sense of Lewes puts it, " wherever we find 
 romantic or miraculous deeds narrated, we may be certain 
 that the hero was great enough at least to sustain the weight 
 of this crown of fabulous glory." Pherekydes, who is cited as 
 one of the teachers of Pythagoras, may have helped to link 
 philosophy with mystical theology in his pupil's mind. He 
 taught the continuance of the soul, notwithstanding external 
 change called death ; and this as an indispensable part of his 
 philosophic doctrine. Besides the lessons of the philosopher 
 of Syros, Pythagoras is credited with initiation into the 
 mysteries of Byblos and Tyre, and with making a consider- 
 able sojourn in the retreat of the prophets in Mount Carmel. 
 Here the fame of Elijah and Elisha yet lingered, but the 
 wooded hill was probably a resort rather of Phoenician and 
 Syrian than of strictly Judaean hermits, especially at this 
 time, when the Hebrew nationality was little more than a 
 straw drawn this way and that on the great opposing streams 
 of Egypt and Babylonia. 
 
 The portrait drawn by lamblichos of Pythagoras while yet 
 a youth, if it represents a being too flawless to have existed, 
 and is presumably unhistorical, at least presents an ideal 
 which it is suggestive even to gaze on from afar : He was the 
 most beautiful and godlike of all that have been celebrated in 
 the annals of history. His aspect was most venerable, and 
 his habits most temperate, so that he was even reverenced and 
 honoured by elderly men. He was adorned by piety and dis- 
 ciplines, by a mode of living transcendently good, by firmness 
 of soul and by a body in due subjection to the mandates of
 
 286 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 reason. In all his words and actions he discovered an inimi- 
 table quiet and serenity, not being subdued at any time by 
 anger, or laughter, or emulation, or contention, or any other 
 perturbation or precipitation of conduct ; but he dwelt at 
 Samos like some beneficent daimon. He confined himself to 
 such nutriment as was slender and easy of digestion. In 
 consequence of this, his sleep was short, his soul vigilant 
 and pure, and his body confirmed in a state of perfect and 
 invariable health. 
 
 From Anaximandros at Miletos, and Epimenides in Crete, 
 Pythagoras is also said to have received instruction, being 
 conducted by the latter to the sacred cave where the priests of 
 Cybelle treasured the legislation of the revealer Minos. 
 
 The Phoenician coast is said to have been the starting- 
 point of Pythagoras for Egypt. There is a pretty legend of 
 this passage of the sea, which is the diametrical opposite of 
 the fable of Jonah. " The sailors gladly received him, fore- 
 seeing that they should acquire great gain by exposing him 
 for sale. . . . He ascended the ship, and sat silent the whole 
 time of the voyage, in that part of the vessel where he was 
 not likely to interfere with the occupations of the sailors. He 
 remained in the same unmoved state for two nights and three 
 days, partaking neither of food, drink, nor sleep, unless per- 
 chance, as he sat in that firm and tranquil condition, he slept 
 for a short time unobserved by all the sailors. When the 
 sailors considered how, contrary to their expectations, their 
 voyage had been continued and uninterrupted, as if some 
 deity had been present ; putting all these things together, 
 they concluded that a divine daimon had in reality passed 
 over with them from Syria into Egypt Hence, speaking both 
 to Pythagoras and to one another with greater decorum and 
 gentleness than before, they completed, through a most tran- 
 quil sea, the remainder of their voyage, and at length happily 
 landed on the Egyptian coast. Here the sailors reverently 
 assisted him in descending from the ship ; and after they had
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 287 
 
 
 placed him on the purest sand, they raised a certain temporary 
 
 altar before him, and heaping on it from their present abund- 
 ance the fruits of trees, and presenting him as it were the first- 
 fruits of their freight, they departed from thence, and hastened 
 to their destined port." 
 
 Pythagoras, according to Plutarch, found his way to Helio- 
 polis, the university town of Egypt, where he found a master 
 in CEnouphis. In those spacious halls, adorned with mural 
 sculpture, appropriated to the use of the priests, in the temple 
 with its long alleys of stony sphinxes, its avenues of inscribed 
 obelisks, what illustrious visitors had been seen ! Moses, the 
 Hebrew lawgiver, was an alumnus there, in all probability ; 
 one old tradition says, a priest ; Solon, the Greek lawgiver, 
 had discoursed with those taciturn scholars of Egypt ; sub- 
 sequently to Pythagoras, Plato also went to study there. In 
 Heliopolis, Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians met on equal terms, 
 as befitted the breadth and tolerance of the city of learning. 
 As a matter of comparative chronology, we may note that 
 about half a century before the visit of Pythagoras, Jeremiah, 
 the Hebrew prophet, against his will, was in or near Helio- 
 polis ; and though finding himself among a large number of 
 fellow-countrymen resident in the land, the prophet looks with 
 the eye of a sore-hearted patriot rather than that of an artistic 
 appreciator, upon " the images of Beth-Shemesh." 
 
 Pythagoras was prepared for the Egyptian learning, says 
 lamblichos, by the fact of his previous instruction in the 
 mysteries of the Phoenicians, which were derived from the 
 sacred rites of Egypt. The tendency of a people to regard its 
 own doctrines as the only orthodoxy is pleasantly confronted 
 by evidences of the opposite and nobler tendency, that of 
 sympathy and communication of one religious philosopher 
 with another. On a lower plane, an almost comic effect may 
 follow such amities. In Nubia some pious " Vandal " paints 
 the figure of apostle Peter with his key over that of the 
 original patron deity of the temple, so that Rameses II. is
 
 288 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 ' 
 represented as making offerings to a post-existent saint ; 
 
 and there are to be found the most apparently incongruous 
 evidences of harmony between the religious symbols of 
 different races, as in an Egypto-Syrian combination such as 
 " Osiris-Eloh," or a Phceniko-Judean title such as "Adonai, 
 the Baal of Heaven." 
 
 Pythagoras managed to become on friendly terms with 
 the priests and prophets of Egypt. According to lamblichos, 
 he was both admired and loved by them, so that we need not 
 wonder at their being communicative when he asked it of 
 them. And, according to tradition, he was one with them in 
 this, that he never wrote revealed no mysteries, never com- 
 municated a truth to one unprepared to receive it. 
 
 Polykrates, the despot of Samos, is well known for the 
 story of the ring which he flung into the sea. It was one of 
 his most highly prized possessions, but his prosperity was so 
 excessive that he was led to fear a reverse if he could not 
 substitute for it some voluntary deprivation. The next day 
 a present of a fresh-caught fish was made him, in which was 
 found his inalienable ring. To Amasis (Aahmes), the King 
 of Egypt, who had given him the warning respecting his 
 prosperity, Polykrates is said to have given Pythagoras a letter 
 of recommendation. This sovereign was a man of enlighten- 
 ment, who opened his country to the stranger, and during his 
 reign many eminent Greeks visited Egypt. 
 
 This introduction, little as it may seem to consist with the 
 story of the departure of Pythagoras, as an unprotected 
 wanderer, from the coast of Phoenicia, may help to account for 
 his friendly reception among the priesthood, of whom the 
 king for the time being was always the nominal head. Ac- 
 cording to another story, Pythagoras made and took over to 
 Egypt three silver goblets, as presents for the priests. 
 
 The hypothesis has been mooted that the travels of 
 Pythagoras are a fable, and have no reference to an individual 
 man, or to actual voyages, but are designed to represent the
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 289 
 
 growth or progress of some quality. If we take it that a 
 Greek priest were tracing the history of the transcendental 
 conception of life, as developed in his own mind and doctrine, 
 he might say, the idea came from an old philosopher at home, 
 Egyptian lore fostered and enlarged it, it was deepened by a 
 knowledge of the mysteries of the oracle, in Babylonia an 
 element was added to it, to India could be traced one of its 
 germs. It is true that the ancients were given to such 
 personification of abstract generalizations, but in presence of 
 the fact that learning in those days could only be acquired 
 orally, and by personal contact of one student with another, 
 there seems no reason to resort to the hypothesis of myth as 
 the origin of the tradition that Pythagoras, the son of a 
 wealthy father, was a great traveller. Proclus asserts that 
 Pythagoras was initiated by Aglaophamus into the mysteries 
 brought from Egypt by Orpheus. 
 
 According to lamblichos, Pythagoras spent so long a 
 period as two-and-twenty years in Egypt, gaining admission 
 to the various temples, and learning geometry, astronomy, and 
 divination. If he was eighteen when he left home, and spent 
 three years in learning from Greek and Phoenician teachers, 
 at the close of his stay in Egypt he would have reached the 
 age of forty-three. The beneficent ruler of Egypt had lately 
 died, and Psammenitus (Psamtek III.), his son, was reign- 
 ing in his stead, when Cambyses (Pers. Kabujiya ; Egypt. 
 Kambat), the Persian king, flushed with conquests, came 
 thither with his army, and vanquished the Egyptian forces 
 in a single battle. The date of this event is known, it is 
 525 B.C. : the only question is whether its relation to Pytha- 
 goras is historic fact or doubtful legend. According to the 
 tradition, he was taken captive and conveyed to Babylon, 
 where he soon came into friendly association with the Magi, 
 and received instruction from them in arithmetic, music, and 
 divine rites. Plutarch cites the name of his Persian master 
 as Zaratas, which seems clearly to point to Zarathustra, or 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Zoroaster. But that prophet having long passed away, it is 
 probable that a member of the order of priests or mages bear- 
 ing that name is the true teacher in question. Ten or eleven 
 years before, the Babylonian empire had broken up before the 
 Medes and Persians, and such of the Hebrew tribes as desired 
 to return to their own country had left Babylon. But a 
 number remained, and there is a tradition that Pythagoras 
 conversed with their rabbis, and learned the Jewish law. 
 Twelve years, says lamblichos, Pythagoras remained with his 
 magian associates, and then returned to Samos. 
 
 Pythagoras gave a new sense to the word philosopher, 
 which probably signified beforetime one devoted to some art, 
 craft, or special knowledge. He used it in the larger sense of 
 lover of wisdom, or, as Plato understood it, one zealous after 
 all wisdom. When asked his art or craft, he said, " I have none, 
 I am a philosopher." And when asked the difference between 
 philosophers and others, he defined it as follows : " Life may 
 be compared to the festival of the games : some persons are 
 there to contend with bodily prowess for glory and the 
 crowns ; some seek gain by traffic in mercantile wares ; others, 
 more noble, resort thither neither for applause nor gain, but 
 solely as spectators of all that passes, and observers of the 
 manner of it. So also in the present life, men of all-various 
 pursuits are assembled. As a merchant on business intent 
 travels from town to town, we quit another life and come into 
 this world, where some are born hunters after glory, others 
 greedy of gain, others influenced by desire of power, or luxury. 
 There are a few who, reckoning all else of no account, are 
 earnest seekers after truth in the nature of things. These I 
 call philosophers, for, as the most liberal position at the games 
 is that of the person who is only a spectator, and has no 
 acquisitive function, so in life the contemplation of things, and 
 knowledge, far transcend all other pursuits." Pythagoras did 
 not despise the practical the essential difference of his ideal 
 is the elimination of selfish personal motive.
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 291 
 
 Upon his return to Samos, where the prophet was in his 
 own country, he found himself remembered by a few, but 
 there was little disposition to attend to the disciplines he 
 desired to introduce. 
 
 A pretty legend is told of an artifice which he employed 
 to get disciples, after he had set up his school. " Happening 
 to observe a certain youth, who was a great lover of gymnastic 
 and other corporeal exercises, but otherwise poor and in 
 difficult circumstances, playing at ball in the gymnasium with 
 great aptness and facility, he thought the young man might 
 easily be persuaded to attend to him, if he were sufficiently 
 supplied with the necessaries of life, and freed from the care 
 of procuring them. As soon, therefore, as the youth left the 
 bath, Pythagoras called him to him, and promised that he 
 would furnish him with everything requisite for the support of 
 his bodily exercise, on condition that he would receive from 
 him gradually and easily, but continually so that he might 
 not be burdened by receiving them at once certain disciplines 
 which he said he had learnt from the barbarians in his youth, 
 but which now began to desert him through forgetfulness and 
 the incursions of old age. The young man immediately 
 acceded to the conditions, through the hope of having the 
 necessary support. Pythagoras, therefore, endeavoured to 
 instruct him in the disciplines of arithmetic and geometry, 
 forming each of his demonstrations in an abacus, and giving 
 the youth three oboli as a reward for every figure which he 
 learnt This also he continued to do for a long time, exciting 
 him to the geometrical theory by the desire of honour ; dili- 
 gently, and in perfect order, giving him (as we have said) 
 three oboli for every figure which he apprehended. But when 
 the wise man observed that the elegance, sweetness, and con- 
 nection of these disciplines, to which the youth had been led 
 in a certain orderly path, had so captivated him that he would 
 not neglect their pursuit though he should suffer the extremity 
 of want, he pretended poverty, and an inability to give him
 
 292 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the three oboli any longer. But the youth on hearing this 
 replied, ' I am able without these to learn and receive your 
 disciplines.' Pythagoras then said, ' But I have not the means 
 of procuring sufficient nutriment for myself,' adding, that as it 
 was requisite, therefore, to labour in order to procure daily 
 necessaries and mortal food, it would not be proper that his 
 attention should be distracted by the abacus, and by stupid 
 and vain pursuits. The youth, however, vehemently abhor- 
 ring the thought of discontinuing his studies, replied : ' I will 
 in future provide for you, and repay your kindness in a way 
 resembling that of the stork ; for I, in my turn, will give you 
 three oboli for every figure,' and from this time he was so 
 captivated by these disciplines, that he alone of all the Samians 
 migrated from his country with Pythagoras." 
 
 If in his school in the Hemicycle Pythagoras failed to win 
 over his Samian neighbours to enter upon his profound and 
 uncompromising system of discipline, yet the citizens laid 
 claim to his assistance in the administration of public affairs. 
 Certain obscure references also make it probable that his fame 
 reached the Greeks who lived on the Hellespont, and were 
 therefore within the range of the influence of the priests of 
 the Getae heroes who contemned earth life, and also of the 
 magic-loving Scythian prophets of the Hyperborean Apollo. 
 
 Pythagoras appears to have been out of his element in 
 Samos. He longed to realize his educational ideal, and, by 
 the thorough training of individuals, to make wisdom a power 
 in the State ; he did not wish to spend his time in the petty 
 detail of home politics. There is a story that a citizen of 
 Crotona in Italy had assisted him in redeeming himself from 
 his captivity in Persia. There is also a tradition that he had 
 accompanied his father on a voyage to Crotona, which was a 
 thriving republic, a Greek colony on the southern coast of 
 Italy. Whatever may have been his inducement, he journeyed 
 to Crotona, and there hoped to find a people more open to 
 enlightenment than the negligent folk at home. Perhaps
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 293 
 
 Democedes, the first physician of Greece, was there at this 
 time, who also was acquainted with Samos, and intimate with 
 its despot Polykrates. It is probably about the year 522 that 
 Pythagoras reached flourishing and populous Crotona, Tar- 
 quin the Proud being at that time ruler of Rome. 
 
 The constitution of the city seems to have been a mingling 
 of aristocratic with democratic institutions. A council of a 
 thousand held the reins of power, composed of the nobles and 
 of the wealthy burgesses, who may be considered representa- 
 tives of trade and of the everyday interests of the people at 
 large. 
 
 How the influence of Pythagoras affected a community so 
 constituted, we shall see better when we follow out the plan 
 of his work. He founded an institution that may be described 
 as a secret society, with nothing to hide or be ashamed of, 
 and thoroughly open as regards its external acts, and those 
 alone. 
 
 Were Pythagoras a spiritual being, and not a man, the 
 plan of his society is just what we might expect. It was a 
 hierarchy of perfection, and if Pythagoras could have com- 
 manded a constant supply of embodied angels, both to rule 
 and to be ruled, it might be in existence now. 
 
 As a commencement individuals must be attracted. 
 Pythagoras began in Crotona by being a preacher and teacher. 
 Crowds flocked to hear his persuasive eloquence ; he selected 
 the most earnest among them. Earnestness may be only for 
 the moment, emotional and spasmodic rather than continuous 
 and fruitful. He appointed tests that should eliminate those 
 unfit for his purpose. Membership of his society was a prize 
 as difficult to win as was his own initiation into the symbolic 
 secrets of Egypt, to attain which, it is said, he did not shrink 
 from circumcision. For five years the novices were condemned 
 to silence awful trial of constancy of purpose and reality of 
 earnestness. During this time they did nothing but listen to 
 discourses, and never saw Pythagoras. After approval by
 
 294 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 this test, and a diagnosis by him of their habits, associations, 
 converse, passions, employment of leisure, physique, physiog- 
 nomy, even to the mode of walking and the body's movement, 
 which he regarded as manifest signs of the unapparent nature 
 of the soul, the probationers were allowed to advance a step 
 farther. Their property became common to the guild, and 
 was committed to the care of the appointed managers or 
 economizers. They themselves were permitted to see as well 
 as hear Pythagoras ; they were within the veil. 
 
 Such as were rejected received double the wealth they 
 brought a most uneconomic proceeding if many were re- 
 jected, and enough to prompt unbelievers to enter upon 
 temporary probation and a tomb was raised to them by 
 their comrades. They were presumably " dead in trespasses 
 and sins." One of these rejected ones was Kylon, a 
 magnate of the neighbouring city of Sybaris, of whom more 
 anon. 
 
 For a backsliding Pythagorean we must needs have pity, 
 considering the arduousness of the ordeal. A true disciple 
 writes retrospectively : " It will be well to consider what a 
 great length of time we consumed in wiping away the stains 
 which had insinuated themselves into our breasts, till, after 
 the lapse of some years, we became fit recipients of the 
 doctrines of Pythagoras. For, as dyers previously purify 
 garments, and then fix in the colours with which they wish 
 them to be imbued, in order that the dye may not be washed 
 away, and may nowise be evanescent ; after the same manner 
 also that divine man prepared the souls of those that were 
 lovers of philosophy, so that they might not deceive him in 
 any of those beautiful and good qualities which he hoped 
 they would possess." 
 
 Pythagoras was one that did not "infuse theorems and 
 divine doctrine into confused and turbid manners. Just as 
 if some one should pour pure and clear water into a deep well 
 full of mud ; for he would disturb the mud, and destroy the
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 295 
 
 clear water. A similar thing likewise takes place between 
 those who teach and those who are taught after this manner. 
 For dense thickets and full of briars surround the intellect 
 and heart of those who have not been purely initiated in 
 disciplines, obscure the mild, tranquil, and reasoning power 
 of the soul, and openly impede the intellective part from 
 becoming increased and elevated." 
 
 The disciples, as admitted, were divided into classes, as 
 men are naturally dissimilar. They were led into all the 
 paths of erudition which his genius and experience had 
 opened to Pythagoras. But he was not merely an intellectual 
 teacher ; he was a " healer of souls," possessing an almost 
 magical influence and power of attracting friendship, and 
 whenever he found any one having any community of symbolic 
 understanding with himself, he at once strove to make a 
 companion of him. With the members of his college he was 
 like an intimate companion of lofty speech and gentle digni- 
 fied manners ; and the evident unselfishness of his purpose, 
 with his devotion to his ideal, that of the formation of 
 excellent men, must have exercised a rare charm. 
 
 The morning was begun by music, and in the community 
 it was realized that music may be of evil tendency or good, of 
 perturbing or tranquillizing, awakening or soothing effect 
 according to its quality. Music appears to have been 
 regarded as an influence equally affecting body and mind ; 
 rhythms, melodies, and incantations were an enchantment by 
 which to treat both psychical and corporeal passions. "The 
 disciples performed their morning walks alone, and in places 
 where there happened to be an appropriate solitude and 
 quiet, and where there were temples and groves, and other 
 things adapted to give delight. They thought it was not 
 proper to converse with any one till they had rendered their 
 own soul sedate, and had co-harmonized the reasoning power. 
 They apprehended it to be disorderly to mingle in a crowd as 
 soon as they rose from bed. On this account all the Pytha-
 
 296 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 goreans always selected for themselves the most sacred places. 
 After their morning walk they associated with each other, 
 and especially in temples, or, if this was not possible, in 
 places that resembled them. This time, likewise, they em- 
 ployed in the discussion of doctrines and disciplines, and in 
 the correction of their manners." They seem to have realized 
 the influence of a sort of cathedral awe, and the elevating 
 effect of noble and poetic surroundings. But they did not 
 remain in meditation only ; " after an association of the kind 
 described, they turned their attention to the health of the 
 body. Most of them used unction and the course ; a less 
 number employed themselves in wrestling in gardens and 
 groves ; others in leaping with leaden weights in their 
 hands ; others in mimetic gesticulations, with a view to the 
 strength of the body, studiously selecting for this purpose 
 opposite exercises. Their dinner consisted of bread and 
 honey or the honey-comb ; they did not drink wine during 
 the day." 
 
 After their meal, the students turned to more external 
 work, such as administrative details and the reception of 
 guests. In the evening they grouped themselves into 
 walking parties, for discussion and mutual improvement. 
 After the walk came the bath, and after this they assembled, 
 ten together, for certain religious rites. Then they took 
 supper, which was finished before sunset. Their food was 
 simple wine, bread, and boiled herbs or fresh salads, with 
 certain kinds only of animal meats. They were as careful 
 not to injure the higher varieties of plants as the useful orders 
 of animals ; and were specially trained to avoid certain 
 flatulent and noxious foods, particularly such as are " an 
 impediment to prophecy, or to the purity and chastity of the 
 soul, or to the habit of temperance, or of virtue." 
 
 Pythagoras "rejected all such things as are adverse to 
 sanctity, and obscure and disturb the other purities of the 
 soul, and the phantasms which occur in sleep." It will be
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 297 
 
 observed that the value of this discipline rests on the faith 
 that, when the body is brought into the best and purest state, 
 mystical senses and consciousness, or spiritual gifts, will be 
 found to be opened normally. 
 
 After supper, the eldest of the group fixed some passage 
 for reading, and the youngest read it aloud. Music closed 
 the day, as it had begun it. As lamblichos puts it, in a 
 somewhat high-flown way, "In the evening, when his 
 disciples were retiring to sleep, he liberated them by these 
 means (appropriate medicine of melody) from the day's 
 disturbances, and purified their intellective power from the 
 influxive and efHuxive waves of a corporeal nature ; rendered 
 their sleep quiet, and their dreams pleasing and prophetic." 
 
 Pythagoras seems to have had a science of music, viewed 
 as purification. Certain melodies disposed the circle which 
 joined in them to elegance and orderly manners ; others were 
 remedies against despondency ; others against rage, anger, 
 desire. The lyre, rather than the pipe, he deemed the true 
 instrument for his purpose. But there is a story of his 
 making the pipe useful in a wonderful way. It is said that 
 once, " through the spondaic song of a piper, he extinguished 
 the rage of a Tauromenian lad, who had been feasting by 
 night, and intended to burn the vestibule of his mistress, in 
 consequence of seeing her coming from the house of his rival. 
 For the lad was inflamed and excited to distraction by a 
 Phrygian song, which, however, Pythagoras promptly sup- 
 pressed. He was astronomizing, and happened to meet with 
 the piper at an unseasonable time of night, and persuaded 
 him to change his Phrygian for a spondaic song, through 
 which the fury of the lad being immediately repressed, he 
 returned home in an orderly manner ; though shortly before 
 he could not be in the least restrained, and would bear no 
 admonition ; and even stupidly insulted Pythagoras when 
 he met him." The Phrygian music, if we are to judge by 
 what Catullus tells of the Galli, must have been maddening,
 
 298 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 and was probably akin to the frenzied chorus of the devil- 
 priests in oriental countries. 
 
 It was doubtless the personal presence of Pythagoras, as 
 much as any musical charm, which acted as a gentle 
 corrective of the disturbed moods of the members of his 
 college. " By his later disciples," says G. H. Lewes, " he 
 was venerated as a god. He who could transcend all earthly 
 struggles, and the great ambitions of the greatest men, to live 
 only for the sake of wisdom, was he not of a higher stamp 
 than ordinary mortals ? Well might later historians picture 
 him as clothed in robes of white, his head crowned with gold, 
 his aspect grave, majestical, and calm ; above the manifesta- 
 tions of any human joy, of any human sorrow ; enwrapt in 
 contemplation of the deeper mysteries of existence ; listening 
 to music and the hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales, or 
 listening to the harmony of the spheres. And to a lively, 
 talkative, quibbling, active, versatile people like the Greeks, 
 what a grand phenomenon must this solemn, earnest, silent, 
 meditative man have appeared." 
 
 That a man's ears should catch the music of the spheres 
 as they circle round in their grand harmonious courses sounds 
 like a rare piece of poetic hyperbole ; but Simplicius not only 
 asserts it as a fact, but gravely argues for it, giving reasons : 
 "A harmonic sound is produced from the motion of the 
 celestial bodies, which may be scientifically collected from the 
 analogy of their intervals." Jupiter, we might presume, ought 
 to play the bass,* and Mars a warlike tenor, the shrill chorus 
 of asteroids not having then made itself manifest. With 
 regard to this faculty of Pythagoras, Simplicius argues as 
 follows : " Perhaps the objection of Aristotle to this assertion 
 of the Pythagoreans may be solved according to the philo- 
 sophy of those men, as follows : all things are not commensu- 
 rate with each other, nor is everything sensible to everything, 
 even in the sublunary region. This is evident from dogs who 
 * Saturn was really credited with the deepest note.
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 299 
 
 scent animals at a great distance which are not smelt by men. 
 How much more, therefore, in things which are separated by 
 so great an interval as those which are incorruptible from the 
 corruptible, and celestial from terrestrial nature, is it true to 
 say, that the sound of divine bodies is not audible by terres- 
 trial ears. But if any one like Pythagoras should have his 
 terrestrial body exempt from him, and his luminous and 
 celestial vehicle and the senses which it contains purified, 
 either through a good allotment,* or through probity of life, 
 or through a perfection arising from sacred operations, such 
 an one will perceive things invisible to others, and will hear 
 things inaudible to others." It seems probable, however, that 
 what Pythagoras really meant was, that the ratios between the 
 intervals of the planets betokened relations of number, which 
 is the mathematical constituent of music. Pythagoras was 
 acquainted with the fact that our earth is not a stationary 
 body, a fact of which many Christians long afterwards showed 
 themselves most dogmatically ignorant. 
 
 The reverence amounting almost to adoration which 
 Pythagoras inspired is only accounted for on the presumption 
 that he actually possessed certain preternatural qualities, or in 
 default of that we must suppose that his admirers had the 
 consummate faculty of conceiving a thing which is not known 
 to exist. Empedokles, himself a sage, spoke of Pythagoras 
 as a man " transcendent in knowledge, who possessed the 
 most ample stores of intellectual wealth, and was in the most 
 eminent degree the promoter of the works of the wise. For 
 when he extended all the powers of his intellect, he easily 
 beheld everything, as far as to ten or twenty ages of the 
 human race." The theory seems to have been, that Pytha- 
 goras was conscious of his spiritual as well as his terrestrial 
 being, and had the faculty of awakening this dormant con- 
 sciousness in others. lamblichos says, " If we may believe 
 in so many ancient and credible historians as have written 
 
 * Cf. Wisdom viii. 20.
 
 300 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 concerning him, the words of Pythagoras contained something 
 of a recalling and admonitory nature, which extended even so 
 far as to irrational animals." Legends are told of Pythagoras 
 gently stroking a most dangerous bear, and conjuring it to 
 touch living beings no more ; to an ox he is said to have given 
 counsel in whisper, counsel which was followed ; and an eagle 
 he is said to have allured from the sky to his hand, afterwards 
 letting it go. We are reminded in these legends of the tradi- 
 tions attaching to Orpheus. 
 
 Pythagoras was " the cause to his disciples of the most 
 appropriate converse with divine beings, whether while awake 
 or asleep ; a thing which never takes place in a soul disturbed 
 by anger, or pain, or pleasure, or by any other base desire, or 
 defiled by ignorance, which is more unholy and noxious than 
 all these. By all these inventions, therefore, he divinely 
 healed and purified the soul, resuscitated and saved its divine 
 part, and conducted to the intelligible its divine eye, which, as 
 Plato says, is better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal 
 eyes ; for by looking through this alone, when it is strength- 
 ened and clarified by appropriate aids, the truth pertaining to 
 all things is perceived." 
 
 The main original feature in Pythagoras as a teacher seems 
 to be his high consciousness of harmony, whether in actual 
 existence, or as a treasure to be earnestly absorbed into the 
 mind. This harmony he saw, in the interdependence of the 
 parts of the universe, in the amity between divine beings and 
 men, between one doctrine and another, between the soul and 
 the body, the rational and irrational part ; he desired to see 
 the same harmony made more sure in the relations of man 
 to man, of husband to wife, of brothers one to the other, of 
 the mortal body, with all its contrary powers, to its pacificator, 
 the mind. Friendship, using the word in its widest sense, as 
 implying relations even between things inanimate, was his 
 vision of life. 
 
 The rules of the community administered by Pythagoras
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 301 
 
 must have been very rigid ; or rather the atmosphere which 
 he breathed was so rare and pure that a man failing to live up 
 to the high ideal presented to him by the master would almost 
 of necessity find himself outside the societary life. And, so 
 far as may be judged by the traditions remaining, there was 
 no arbitrary enforcement of membership, but the association 
 was wholly voluntary. 
 
 Mathematics was made one of the early studies in the 
 Pythagorean school, as being the first step towards wisdom. 
 For a science which deals with that which lies in the middle 
 region between things appreciable to the senses and spiritual 
 and divine facts, enlarges the mind and renders it the more 
 elastic for the reception of supersensual ideas. In other 
 words, that which has to do with abstract and intangible pro- 
 perties, is a fit preparation for the study of what is spiritual. 
 What the students learned, they were trained to learn 
 thoroughly, and the strength and accuracy of the memory 
 were maintained by constant exercise. The student before 
 rising from his bed was led to review the actions and studies 
 of the preceding day in the minutest detail. This was done 
 methodically and in the right order ; and one day's events 
 resumed, the Pythagorean proceeded to recall to himself the 
 transactions of the day before that. 
 
 The late Dr. Mozley asserted that the simple apprehension 
 of a spiritual world is by itself no preservative whatever 
 against moral obliquities. This may be true, though the 
 enlargement of the vista of life due to such an apprehension 
 should not be without an effect at once steadying and eleva- 
 ting. The acquisition of spiritual knowledge might possibly 
 modify the standard by which moral questions are judged in 
 the world. What the world calls right, might when analyzed 
 resolve itself into expediency ; what the world calls wrong 
 might be found to be only an imperfect use of what is 
 right. Tyndall urges that " what is really wanted is the 
 lifting power of an ideal element in human life." "What's
 
 302 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the best thing in the world ? Something out of it, I think," 
 says Elizabeth Barrett Browning. If it is in this best thing 
 that the true ideal is found, it is of little moment on the 
 score of marvel, but of the greatest on the ground of fact. 
 Pythagoras painted no vague or startling picture of life in 
 Hades, but he staunchly asserted that to be injured one's 
 self is better than to murder another, for in that unseen life 
 is judgment, and the soul there finds its proper estimation 
 and level. Retributive justice he very ingeniously associated 
 with the symbol of the right-angled triangle. That figure 
 may be composed with an infinite number of variations of 
 its sides, but it will ever contain an equal demonstration of 
 power. Whatever the relative proportions of the sides of the 
 triangle, the square of the side subtending the right angle will 
 invariably be equal to the combined squares of the two sides 
 containing the right angle. Circumstances vary, the law 
 abides. 
 
 A man raised, strengthened, and purified by earnestness 
 and culture has a double duty to himself and to others. He 
 is bound to exercise his faculties for his own sake lest they 
 perish of inaction ; he is constrained by the law of his being 
 to exercise them not only for himself but for others. It is an 
 almost necessary consequence of the growth of a community 
 to strength, that it should be called upon to do practical 
 work. If it has dealt kindly with those who are without its 
 rules, it will have won respect, and will be besought to con- 
 tribute its experience and power. 
 
 In the order founded by Pythagoras, there were the 
 listeners who passed on into classes for mathematics and 
 physics. Among more advanced students we find the division 
 into exoterics and esoterics. There were members given to 
 contemplation, to science, to politics. And outside these 
 divisions there were others founded on the relations of the 
 disciples to the master. There were personal friends, direct 
 disciples, who were called probably not in his lifetime
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 303 
 
 Pythagorics ; the disciples of these, Pythagoreans ; while 
 those who lived outside the community, but emulated its life, 
 formed the class of Pythagorists. 
 
 Everything of the Pythagorean tradition betokens a 
 volunteer hierarchical order, in which by the conquest of 
 unruly ambitions and passions, each found his true place. 
 Two considerations suggest themselves : that an organization 
 so formed must prove one of great power ; but that when it 
 came to extend its influence publicly, there would be a lack 
 of homogeneity, tending to disruption, between a group of 
 persons trained to absolute self-control and a common accord, 
 and a mass of citizens priding themselves on the most they 
 can acquire of individualism and freedom from restraint. 
 
 The late Lord Lytton speaks thus of Pythagoras in refer- 
 ence to the external and political development of his Order. 
 " He selected the three hundred, who at Croton formed his 
 Order, from the noblest families, and they were professedly 
 reared to know themselves, that so they might be fitted to 
 command the world. It was not long before this society, of 
 which Pythagoras was the head, appears to have supplanted 
 the ancient Senate, and obtained the legislative administra- 
 tion. In this institution Pythagoras stands alone ; no other 
 founder of Greek philosophy resembles him." Even Plato 
 was content to have his ideal Republic on paper. 
 
 The ideal of a community of perfect order, each having 
 his place, learner at the feet of teacher, novice gladly sub- 
 ordinate to sage, when carried out into the political world, 
 means a hierarchical aristocracy. An aristocracy, with one 
 proviso, is the most perfect type of government conceivable. 
 It must ever maintain the condition of its title by being an 
 administration conducted by such as are, at the time being, 
 the noblest souls, and the fittest to rule, of the whole commu- 
 nity. Such a government possessed of absolute power would 
 raise life to its highest possible perfection. 
 
 But in this world, even if the maintenance of an unim-
 
 304 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 peachable and trusted body of administrators could be 
 ensured, the system will not always work so well in practice 
 as in theory. We seem to need to live by actions and 
 reactions, rather than by the placid perfection which wise 
 theory would dictate. 
 
 Questions difficult to answer arise : whose choice decides 
 who are the aristocracy ? what is to be done when corruption 
 follows the temptations of power ? These do not seem to 
 have arisen to complicate the political problem on which the 
 Pythagoreans were labouring. They came into power of their 
 own inherent force ; their discipline was not impaired by the 
 exercise of power for its own sake. 
 
 But the system is too perfect to work. There are jealousies 
 and discontent among the masses, to whom to be free is a 
 more intelligible ideal than to be orderly. A democracy, if it 
 suffer, has no one to blame but itself, it can but supersede 
 individual officials, grumble and go on. Under aristocratic 
 rule there is a ready target for the vials of the popular 
 wrath to accumulate themselves against. The masses are 
 like children, they love their own way, and that way is not 
 always the way of wisdom. The ardour of inharmonious life, 
 the sway of popular caprice, Pythagoras meets by a system 
 as rigidly perfect as that of the steps of his disciples' initia- 
 tion. His standard is too high, his ideal of life too solemn 
 and religious, too much like the life of the Egyptian priests 
 in the temple. The higher natures cannot always allow for the 
 lusts and loves and self-will of the lower ; they would tran- 
 quillize those who prefer to retain the prerogative of not 
 being wise until they want to be. It is easy to understand 
 how a restless, pleasure-loving community might baffle the 
 benevolent schemes of a calm philosopher, and how he would 
 vainly seek to remedy the difficulty by relaxations of one 
 kind, restrictions of another. 
 
 The late Lord Lytton, a man of statesmanlike mind, com- 
 ments thus : " Pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 305 
 
 his attempt to revolutionize society, he had recourse to aris- 
 tocracies for his agents. Revolutions, especially those influ- 
 enced by religion, can never be worked out but by popular 
 emotions. It was from this error of judgment that he enlisted 
 the people against him ; for by the account of Neanthes, 
 related by Porphyry, and, indeed, from all other testimony, 
 it is clearly evident that to popular, not party, commotion 
 his fall must be ascribed. It is no less clear that after 
 his death, while his philosophical sect remained, his political 
 code crumbled away. The only seeds sown by philosophers 
 which spring up into great States, are those that, whether 
 for good or evil, are planted in the hearts of the many." 
 
 The good influence of the Pythagorean school must have 
 been considerable. From great luxury and licentiousness, the 
 community was in great part converted to sobriety and order. 
 The original constitution of the city appears to have been 
 aristocratic ; the Pythagoreans held in especial respect exist- 
 ing laws, but probably they consolidated, and made more 
 theoretically perfect the aristocratic system. 
 
 Jealousies arose ; party spirit developed, and with that the 
 calm rule of wisdom, such as we may imagine to hold good 
 amongst angels, or perfectly trained Pythagoreans, must at 
 once be impaired. On the one side was the strong tumultuous 
 agitation and excitement of a popular movement ; on the 
 other, calm, beneficent, impassive philosophy, impressed with 
 the religious conception of the moral utility of obedience ! 
 To Pythagoras the licence of a mob must have meant servi- 
 tude to passion. 
 
 Excuses were not long wanting among those who sought 
 to throw off the strict, but kindly Pythagorean yoke. Trifles 
 or monstrosities of well-marked colour, these please savages 
 and mobs. It was urged that the members of the order had 
 a separate life from that of the other citizens ; that they gave 
 their right hand to those of their own sect alone (it was 
 probably the secret grip by which members recognized one 
 VOL. I. x
 
 306 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 another) ; that they shared their possessions with each other 
 in common, but excluded their relations from this fellowship, 
 as if they were strangers. Every citizen, it was advanced 
 ought to be eligible for the magistracy, and the rulers were 
 bound to render an account of their conduct to a committee 
 elected by lot from the multitude. A democratic impulse 
 this, and an absolute inversion of the perfect ideal of hier- 
 archical rule. 
 
 Kylon, who had been found unfitted to go through with 
 the Pythagorean training, on account of his violent, undis- 
 ciplined character, delivered long harangues against the 
 society. Another individual followed suit with a garbled and 
 calumnious version of certain of the maxims of the order. In 
 fact, it was discovered by their opponents that their whole 
 system of pretended philosophy was a mere plot and con- 
 spiracy against popular rights ! 
 
 These articles of impeachment, industriously circulated, 
 produced their natural effect. The people for whom the right 
 to magistracy was claimed, took the law into their own hands, 
 set on fire a temple where a number of Pythagoreans were 
 assembled, or, according to another account, the house of 
 Milo, and all but two of those within were burned or mas- 
 sacred. It is not known whether Pythagoras himself was 
 among the number present ; and whether he went into 
 sorrowful exile or was killed is a matter of doubt. A 
 simultaneous wave of democracy was advancing in Greece 
 herself, and Pythagorism, as a political rather than a philoso- 
 phical institution, was crushed for ever. 
 
 Pythagoras had imbued his followers with a high spiritual 
 influence, and his doctrines were such as would be engraven 
 upon the heart rather than set as dogmas upon a skin of 
 parchment. When the democratic revolt had succeeded in 
 breaking the bands and casting away the cords of the Pytha- 
 gorean order a constraint that was irksome because too 
 noble, and therefore too exigent the influence of the brother-
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 307 
 
 hood was not wholly upset, but only changed in character. 
 The political organization was finally broken up, or in other 
 words the endeavour to force wise and sober action upon unfit 
 people, whose ambitions craved the wide exercise of freedom, 
 was frustrated. The Pythagorean medicine for humanity 
 might be the true one, and yet not the true one for individuals 
 who had not yet traversed the early and perhaps necessary 
 lessons of personal emulation and life's natural activities. By 
 the suppression of its political proceedings, the Pythagorean 
 order, so soon as the protracted civil dissensions were pacified, 
 was able to devote itself with a single heart to its true pursuit 
 of religion in philosophy and harmony in science. Having 
 journeyed through the fires of adversity, the members might 
 well have passed out of discipleship into the serenity of the 
 realization of truth. And now they were able to communicate 
 of such things as they had in the old and peaceful way to such 
 alone as were earnest and willing to receive them. The 
 organized attempt to make heaven out of earth by a quasi- 
 paternal control had fallen through ; the purpose remained 
 the clearer of fostering the divine spark little by little and 
 wherever it might present itself. As a philosophical sect, 
 after the political feud was healed, the Pythagoreans were 
 re-admitted to the very cities from which they had been 
 expelled. We are reminded of the jealous fear lest Jesus of 
 Nazareth, tolerated as a humble spiritual teacher, should set 
 about making himself a king ; a fact which may be taken in 
 support of a doctrine we may advance, that the generality 
 would rather be ruled by a tyrant than by an angel ; their 
 bodies might bend before the violence of the one, their inmost 
 souls would tremble before the mild perfection of the other. 
 The Pythagoreans were in all probability far from being 
 angels ; they probably gave way to an elation in their early 
 political successes, which no magical music of their master 
 could altogether free from the taint of partisan pride. 
 
 It was a beautiful dream, the noblest chimera in the world,
 
 308 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 not only to render God the things that be God's, but to render 
 to God also the things that be Caesar's ; but even for the com- 
 pleteness of the contour of the life of Pythagoras, we may be 
 glad that he died in the tumult that purged his institutions 
 from their error, rather than that he should have found an 
 apotheosis in the triumph of that which was to be proved 
 untriumphant in the sequel. We may say in fancy that the 
 difficult lesson of Ithuriel is to learn that his fine-pointed 
 delicate spear has to refrain from the touch that will crumble 
 even manifest evil, when that evil has to bide its time, and 
 become in some manner, even beyond Ithuriel' s ken, good in 
 the making. The way to the blessed life shown by Pythagoras 
 was not a way that a mob could walk in, nor was it the true 
 mode of preparation to constrain them by laws wielded by a 
 brotherhood who were unconstrained and volunteer workers 
 themselves. The most certain way of all to irritate the 
 surging democratic factions was to govern them straitly by an 
 exclusive oligarchy, whose members lived apart and had a 
 secret bond of brotherhood among themselves, a spring of 
 sympathy which was closed to those without the pale of the 
 order. 
 
 Too much, perhaps, has been said of constraint. It is 
 probable that for a time the influence of Pythagoras was 
 such that even the bustling masses of the great Greco- Italian 
 city were eager to follow him, even in directions demanding 
 a higher ideal than they were wont to follow. And some 
 hundreds of the noble and wealthy classes had become con- 
 verts, and were enrolled in the exoteric club which repre- 
 sented Pythagorean politics. But of ignorant enthusiasts, as of 
 revival converts, few possess staying power. A French writer 
 upon Pythagoras (A. Ed. Chaignet), speaking of human 
 nature where he should rather be speaking of mediocre human 
 qualities, says that, "while in the intoxication of a beautiful 
 sentiment of perfection it believes itself capable of so many 
 sacrifices and so sublime an effort, it relapses quickly indeed
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 309 
 
 into prosaic and vulgar reality." A relapse of this kind, 
 which, from the democratic point of view, seemed not a 
 reaction but a struggle for political rights, gave birth to the 
 revolution, to whose blind fury was due the death of the lead- 
 ing associates of Pythagoras. 
 
 The master himself had occupied no official post in the 
 administration, and it is probable that the action of the inner 
 circle of the order was rather that of latent influence than of 
 any public exhibition of power. It was the more easy, there- 
 fore, after the turmoil had calmed down, for the brethren to 
 resume their position as students of the mathematics of this 
 world and the rhythmic perfection of the next. After worldly 
 failure, they were the better able to succeed as initiators into 
 a mode of life which endeavoured after purification from 
 mundane dross, and opened an entrance into the higher 
 spheres by way of self-mastery, self-denial, and the exchange 
 of a sensual view of things for one aesthetically pure. 
 
 Among the many suggestions designed to account for the 
 peculiar acquirements of Pythagoras when in his youthful 
 stage, is one that he derived the greater part of his ethical 
 doctrines from Themistoclea, the Priestess of Delphi. If he 
 received from a woman, he well returned the gift to the sex. 
 He instituted reunions of ladies who were attached to the 
 order, while youths and children were also brought under the 
 influence of his ideal. The individual he knew how to help 
 on the way of reform ; the State might also be reformed with 
 mathematical certainty by the improvement of individuals, 
 were it not for one ascertained fact. This is that parents of 
 inferior qualities of mind and even of inferior constitution are 
 more prolific than those who, from their own high qualities, 
 might be expected to bring into the world children of genius, 
 or at least, a progeny of superior parts, ready to carry forward 
 rather than fling into the mire the splendid torch of progress. 
 And, moreover, the system of reform by units must be a 
 volunteer system, to be of any value ; and consequently
 
 3ro THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 can never be completely undertaken until all are of one 
 mind. 
 
 Meanwhile, the heroic efforts after the reform of the State 
 by wise laws had failed, and magistrates, descending from the 
 role of fathers and tutors, arrived once again at the position 
 of executors of the will of the people ; or, if they were like 
 the generality, effected the most of appearance of perform- 
 ance of that august will with the least contravention of their 
 own judgment that the popular surveillance would allow. It 
 is reasonable to suppose that the private and individual 
 lessons and labours of the brotherhood may have been carried 
 on the more earnestly for the collapse of their administrative 
 scheme. Their faith had been tried and not found wanting. 
 They at least succeeded in initiating a way of life which no 
 doubt helped many a brother that came after them to " take 
 heart again." 
 
 " Have those who delighted in the conversation of Homer," 
 asks Plato, " handed down to posterity the tradition of any 
 Homeric way of life, in the same way that Pythagoras was 
 himself much beloved on this account, and from that day to 
 this those that bear his name and follow the Pythagorean 
 habit are accounted conspicuous beyond others?" (Rep. X. 
 600 a). 
 
 We may bear in mind the notable differences which exist 
 between the Pythagorean brotherhood and monastic com- 
 munities, such as those of the Buddhists, Therapeuts, and 
 Christian ascetics. The Geeek wisdom-seekers were not celi- 
 bates, they did not hold in morbid contempt and fear the 
 principle of beauty, or the exercise of the functions of life, 
 but strove rather to refine and cultivate the perceptions and 
 the uses of art. Their ideal being perfection, they could not 
 reasonably neglect any of the many roads by which the 
 human spirit may rise into glimpses of that ideal. This con- 
 cord of the spirit of the universe, they typified as the choir 
 of the muses, who they said subsisted in conjunction with
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 311 
 
 each other, and were always one and the same, comprehending 
 in themselves symphony, harmony, rhythm, and all things 
 whatsoever which lead to concord. " Sweeter than Sirens are 
 the muses," said Pythagoras. 
 
 Women in the community were called to life and activity, 
 and not to intellectual activity alone, but by a separate and 
 frequent instruction, to the practice of the virtues and duties 
 proper to their sex and position. They were to be taken as 
 from a vestal hearth by their husbands and brought home by 
 them in such spirit as if both were in the presence of the gods. 
 The pair were to be true to each other, the wife being taken 
 into association, not as a subordinate, but as the companion 
 of life. And as other compacts were engraved in tablets and 
 pillars, so the conjugal compact was to find its seal and writing 
 in the offspring themselves. The divulsion of parents and 
 children from each other, Pythagoras also regarded as the 
 greatest of injuries. To him who saw that no project for 
 improvement was of any avail which did not make the 
 individual its sole ground and only test, it must have seemed 
 like expecting to add gentleness to life without the spells of 
 music, to look for good progress in children without their 
 knowing the warm touch of the love of their parents. 
 
 If, in presence of their philosophic dignity, we regard the 
 Pythagorean ladies as abbesses, we must not forget that they 
 were married abbesses, equal with their husbands, and mutually 
 sharing with them the love of their children. And the simple 
 purpose in life, which all the brethren were taught to hold 
 before them, was, To be such in reality as they wished to 
 appear to be to others. 
 
 How pure was the ideal of the marriage relation among them 
 may be judged from the following, which is of more import 
 if considered in its relation to a then prevalent conception of 
 ceremonial purity than can be well understood now. It puts to 
 shame the petty precautionary precepts of Rabbinism. "Theano 
 was asked in how many days a woman becomes pure after
 
 312 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 intercourse with a man. She replied : If it be her own husband, 
 she becomes pure at once ; if it be another's, never." This 
 is as the story is told by Diogenes Laertios and Stobaios ; in 
 Clement of Alexandria it is given with the added implica- 
 tion that the purity is to be such as to entitle the women 
 to join the festival of Thesmophoria, which was in honour 
 of Demeter, the laws of nature, civil order, and especially the 
 institution of marriage. By lamblichos the observation is 
 ascribed to Pythagoras himself; but between his wife and 
 himself there is no need to debate the authorship. 
 
 The influence of Pythagoras is in no way shown to better 
 advantage than in its effect upon the women, whom, like 
 Buddha, he admitted among his disciples. To his daughter 
 Damo it is said that he entrusted his Commentaries, and 
 charged her to divulge them to no one outside the circle, 
 Though she might have sold these discourses for money, she 
 faithfully fulfilled her trust and would not abandon them, 
 deeming obedience to her father's serious injunctions to be, 
 even in face of poverty, something more valuable than gold. 
 
 It was long ago remarked that the Greek schools were 
 schools of philosophy and not of languages, and that it is in 
 the knowledge of things, and not of the mediums by which 
 a knowledge of them is conveyed, that true learning consists. 
 Modern scholars are perhaps in danger of losing sight of the 
 light of truth that inspired ancient writers, by placing it under 
 the bushel of scientific criticism and the apparatus of philo- 
 logy. 
 
 The pre- existence of the soul, which is said by Herodotus to 
 be originally an Egyptian doctrine, and by Philostratos to have 
 been learned from the Brahmans, Pythagoras appears to have 
 believed in, with all seriousness and earnestness as a fact ; the 
 modern tendency is to regard such a view historically, as an 
 interesting philosophical speculation ; to hold it off as at arm's 
 length by the intellect, and by no means to entertain or reject 
 it with any warmth of personal interest. " He reminded many
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 313 
 
 of his familiars," says lamblichos, " by most clear and evident 
 indications, of the former life which their soul lived before 
 it was bound to the body." With regard to the memory 
 which Pythagoras claimed to have of the sojourning places 
 of his own soul in its past transmigratory life, there is a 
 tradition tending to show that, if it were a madness, there was 
 at least sane method in it. It is quite possible that the stories, 
 according to which Pythagoras specified the historic in- 
 dividuals whom he identified with himself, may be the inven- 
 tions of his followers, in supposed accordance with the theory. 
 Pythagoras is said to have asserted that his soul found its 
 presentment as the chieftain Euphorbos at the epoch of the 
 Trojan war ; and in the six hundred years between that time 
 and the then present, his soul had passed through several 
 bodies before it came into that in which it then tabernacled. 
 But the theory itself, left in its proper indefiniteness, deserves 
 respect. We may remember the Water of Oblivion into 
 which a mortal was believed to be dipped while on his journey 
 from Earth to Hades. Conversely, we are bound by fact to 
 recognize that, if we adopt a theory of pre-existent life, we 
 have somehow let the realizable memory of it be washed 
 away. If we picture to ourselves a soul entering material 
 existence from some other life, it will be evident that 
 the memory of that existence does not reside in the new 
 material tabernacle, but, if anywhere, in the spiritual entity 
 which by degrees is availing itself of, informing, and actuating 
 the wondrous physical machinery that is placed, with new 
 openings at every stage of growth, at its disposal. If, now, 
 the spirit be fully attracted into that external life, finding all 
 its interests therein, receiving all its impressions therethrough, 
 and leaving no unabsorbed part of itself still opened to the 
 life unseen, there is no likelihood of any spiritual conscious- 
 ness or reminiscences asserting themselves. The faculties of 
 the spirit are all applied to its physical activity. 
 
 But if a spirit should come to be incarnate, which is too
 
 314 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 large in its proper actions to be wholly drawn into terrestrial 
 life, there will remain a part not closed in by the corporeal 
 bars, but reaching above them or into a ken beyond them. A 
 gateway will remain open, a vista along which in meditation 
 or emotion, by vision or by effort, the spirit may gaze on 
 or wander toward that sea which brought it hither, bearing 
 it along, as it were fluid particle becoming nucleated cell, 
 within the infinite circulation of the veins of God. Through 
 that hidden channel, when the soul is conscious of its partial 
 enfranchisement, will come scarce intelligible whispers, broken 
 messages of strange memories, stimulating sub-consciousness 
 of spirit ; these may make the routine of earth seem com- 
 paratively small, and either draw the soul into the deep recesses 
 of what seems to be mere contemplation, as viewed from 
 the earthly plane, or sting it into large dreams of such actions 
 as mark heroes, and make the marvel of pettifogging men. 
 
 Of this gift of Pythagoras we have the account in poetic 
 form ; that Hermes, who among the Egyptians was accounted 
 the conductor of souls in the unseen world (a doctrine which 
 Pythagoras also explicitly teaches), had desired him to select 
 any gift he pleased, with the exception of immortality ; such 
 immortality, that is, it must be presumed, as was deemed to 
 appertain to deific beings ; the hierarchical order, according to 
 Pythagoras, being gods, daimons, heroes, men. He accord- 
 ingly requested that, whether living or dead,* he might pre- 
 serve his memory. He therefore retained it on his transmi- 
 gratory road, preserving consciousness of his soul's Hadean 
 experience, and a recollection of the hap of other souls. As 
 Ovid (Metamorph.) puts into the mouth of Pythagoras : 
 
 " Souls dispense with death ; and their last abode left behind, 
 For aye, in new homes received, a dwelling and life they find." 
 
 * It is difficult to decide in what sense the words are used ; whether " living " 
 must here mean terrestrial living, or the opposite condition, as implied in such 
 phrases as "to live is death, to die is gain." Socrates says (Gorgias, 492 e), "I 
 should not wonder if Euripides speaks the truth when he says : ' Who knows 
 whether to live is not death, and to die, life ? ' "
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 315 
 
 In this consciousness of pre-existence Pythagoras mani- 
 fested what the Brahmans and Buddhists regarded as the sign 
 of the true prophet. " I call him alone a Brahman, who knows 
 his former abode, who sees both heaven and hell, and has 
 reached the extinction of births," has " attained his last body " 
 or birth (Vasettha Sutta). Sakya Muni says of his own 
 corporeal embodiments, and their cause in selfish longings : 
 " I have run through the revolution of numerous births, seek- 
 ing the architect of this dwelling (the body), and discovering 
 him not ; grievous is repetition of birth. O, architect, thou 
 art now seen ; thou shalt not build me another house ; thy 
 rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered ; the mind being 
 detached has attained to the extinction of desire." 
 
 There is very good reason for this doctrine being un- 
 familiar and incredible to the most of us, who in all proba- 
 bility, if the hypothesis be true, have not yet arrived at the 
 state when the soul begins to stir mightily within the husk of 
 its final infleshment : our body, therefore, is for the time being 
 the best one possible, and, being suited to our state, gently 
 veils our eyes to obviate the disturbance which a too early 
 vision of enfranchised life might produce. 
 
 Those who care to discover whether Pythagoras was alone 
 in cherishing a seeming chimera, or rather whether, among 
 any traditions more familiar to us than the doctrines of 
 Hindoo ascetics, there are any traces of acceptance of the 
 theory of pre-existence, may ponder in all reverence such 
 instances as the following : 
 
 "Jesus said . . . before Abraham was born, I am " (John 
 ix. 58). That is, Before Abraham was in terrestrial exist- 
 ence, I possessed essential existence. 
 
 " Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which 
 I had with thee before the world was " (John xvii. 5). The 
 expression " the world " denotes terrestrial existence ; and we 
 may be reminded of such an expression as " all the tribes of 
 the earth will mourn " as denoting the depression and over-
 
 316 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. ' 
 
 throw of the bodily powers when the spirit leaves them to 
 their inherent nothingness. 
 
 The Pharisees, it is known, held the doctrine of pre- 
 existence ; of the disciples of Rabbi Jesus the following is 
 told : " His disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this 
 man or his parents, that he should be born blind ? " Glanvil 
 in his " Lux Orientalis " advances the theory that " there 
 were doubtless many doctrines entertained by the apostles 
 and the more learned of their followers, which were dispro- 
 portioned to the capacities of the generality, who hold but 
 little theory. . . . There was strong meat for the more grown 
 and manly Christians, as well as milk for babes and weaker 
 constitutions. Now Scripture was designed for the benefit of 
 the most, and they could little understand, and less make use 
 of, a speculation so remote from common conceit as pre-exist- 
 ence." Jerome states that the theory was propounded among 
 the early Christians. 
 
 The following shows the popular Jewish doctrine on the 
 subject, blindly and superstitiously held : 
 
 " Who do men say that the son of man is ? And they 
 said, some, John the Baptist ; others, Elijah ; and others, 
 Jeremiah, or one of the prophets ! " (Matt. xvi. 14). 
 
 " Herod, the tetrarch, heard of the fame of Jesus, and said 
 unto his servants, This is John the Baptist ; he was raised 
 from the dead ; and therefore the mighty works are active in 
 him " (Matt. xiv. i, 2). 
 
 It is probable that the doctrine of corporeal resurrection 
 is an offshoot of this belief in reincarnation, having sprung 
 from the difficulty of the realization by the mind, while 
 relying upon corporeal senses for its information, of any but 
 terrestrial embodiment. It was probably in this materialistic 
 sense that David Hume pronounced transmigration to be " the 
 only system of immortality that philosophy can listen to." 
 
 Pythagoras asserted that the soul went a necessary circle of 
 transmigrations ; but we hear nothing of his expressing any
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 317 
 
 expectation to be embodied again, after his decease as Pytha- 
 goras. We may recall Buddha's apostrophe of the cause of 
 repeated birth which he had discovered in his own nature, and 
 at last had overcome. It seems to be the quality which later 
 theologians described as " the will of the flesh." 
 
 The writer of the Book of Wisdom expresses himself 
 thus as to the reason why he was able to find a body that 
 served him well : " I was a witty child, and had a good spirit. 
 Rather, it was through being good that I came into an unde- 
 filed body." Spenser appears to be following this when he 
 writes : 
 
 " So every spirit, as it is more pure, 
 
 And hath in it the more of heavenly light , 
 So it the fairer body doth procure 
 To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
 With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
 For, of the soul, the body form doth take, 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make." 
 
 But Spenser goes a step further when he says the soul 
 makes the body. The body is prepared for it, and may be 
 chosen by it. The stronger the tenant, the more it may 
 modify and transfigure that tabernacle. But can we, with the 
 facts of life before us, say more than this ? 
 
 Having shown that there were adherents to the doctrine of 
 pre-existence in the ages succeeding Pythagoras, we may ask 
 the question how far they are indebted to him as the father of 
 the tradition. From Pythagoras to Plato is a short and 
 certain step ; from Neo-Pythagorism and Neo-Platonism was 
 drawn much that, however we may disown the source, we 
 have absorbed through our own traditions. But the doctrine 
 of pre-existence has for the most part shone with broken rays, 
 like a light floating on the wave of a troubled and misty sea. 
 In India alone has it held a central place among definite and 
 accepted dogmas. 
 
 One great secret of the wide influence of Pythagoras seems 
 to lie in the fact that he was not a fanatic or sectarian. With
 
 3i8 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 a spiritual creed visionary enough to carry a man off his 
 natural balance, he yet deliberately wedded to that faith the 
 practical truth that " the first attention which should be paid 
 to men, is that which takes place through the senses, as when 
 some one perceives beautiful figures and forms, or hears beau- 
 tiful rhythms and melodies." He strove to make the natural 
 life pure, and sane, and strong, conceiving that a well- 
 developed and wholesome man would better receive the 
 higher truths of life in their season, than one narrowed and 
 crippled by frantic asceticism. Virtue, he realized, is not a 
 plant of sudden growth, but one requiring careful and patient 
 development. His followers starved no part of their nature, 
 but strove to regulate all their faculties, whether corporeal, 
 emotional, or intellectual. 
 
 The philosophy of metempsychosis is subtly conveyed by 
 the late Prof. F. D. Maurice as follows (" Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy ") : " This soul, which can look before and after, 
 can shrink and shrivel itself into an incapacity of contem- 
 plating aught but the present moment. Of what depths of 
 degeneracy it is capable ! What a beast it may become ! 
 And if something lower than itself, why not something 
 higher ? And if something higher and lower, may there not 
 be a law accurately determining its elevation and descent ? 
 Each soul has its peculiar evil tastes, bringing it to the like- 
 ness of different creatures beneath itself ; why may it not be 
 under the necessity of abiding in the condition of that thing 
 to which it has adapted and reduced itself ? " 
 
 We find among the relics of Xenophanes a story which is 
 understood to refer to Pythagoras : " It is said that as a 
 passer-by he was touched with pity on account of a dog that 
 was being beaten, and spoke the following words : ' Stay thine 
 hand, and do not strike, since it is the soul of a dear man 
 which I recognize by perception through its cry.' " This is 
 a clear trace of Indian philosophy ; but it is probable that 
 Pythagoras, if he uttered the words recorded, only meant to
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 319 
 
 startle, and thus to attract men's minds into a broader sym- 
 pathy with living beings. The claim to distinguish the voice 
 was, it may be imagined, a bit of fiction, and it reminds us of 
 the methods of the Hebrew rabbis when they wished to fledge 
 the arrow of a recondite thought. 
 
 The Golden Song of the Pythagoreans concludes with 
 the assurance, "When thou hast left behind thy body, and 
 art come to the Ether, free [or to the free Ether], thou wilt 
 be deathless, an imperishable god, no longer a mortal." 
 
 This will remind readers of the Hebrew scriptures of the 
 expression (Gen. iii. 5), " Ye shall be as Elohim ; " and (Gen. 
 iii. 22), " The man is become as one of us, to know good and 
 evil." The word Elohe> plural Elohim, is however not con- 
 fined to the Supreme Being, but applied to supernal beings, 
 and also to mortals as vicegerents of Deity. 
 
 The following story argues the possession by the Pytha- 
 goreans of a calm and orderly mind, even in regard to occult 
 powers : " When Pythagoras was asked by a certain man 
 what was indicated by seeming in sleep to converse with his 
 father who was dead, he answered that it indicated nothing. 
 ' For neither,' said he, ' is anything portended by your speak- 
 ing with me. ' ' 
 
 From Pythagoras was derived the impetus to so large 
 a wave of thought, spreading in different directions with 
 distinctive tendencies, but not absolutely accordant doctrine, 
 that, since he did not write, it is impossible to differentiate 
 the exact teaching of the master himself. The problem is 
 further complicated by the fact that other kindred influences 
 commingled with his. As K. O. Mtiller states : " An ex- 
 tensive Orphic literature first appeared about the time of 
 the Persian war, when the remains of the Pythagorean order 
 in Magna Graecia united themselves to the Orphic associa- 
 tions." 
 
 But some of the ethical sayings ascribed to Pythagoras are 
 so simple and of such deep religious feeling, that they seem
 
 320 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 rather to have emanated from him than to be the formal 
 utterances of a philosophic school. 
 
 He forbids men to pray for anything in particular for 
 themselves, because they do not know what is good for them. 
 He pronounces against oaths, on the high ground that every 
 man ought so to exercise himself as to be worthy of belief 
 without an oath. He proclaimed the beautiful rule, far too 
 high apparently to be generally followed among men, that 
 people should associate with one another in such a way as 
 not to make enemies of their friends, but to make friends 
 of their enemies. The spiritual nature of the man is also 
 evidenced by his teaching his disciples that they should think 
 nothing exclusively their own. The nature which is opened 
 to nothing beyond earth life cannot dare to relax its grasp 
 even upon the lowest form of property. Pythagoras says, 
 " Esteem that to be above all things good which in being 
 communicated to another will be the rather increased to 
 yourself." 
 
 " Despise those things which, when liberated from the 
 body, you will not want ; and exercising yourself in those 
 things of which when liberated from the body you will be in 
 want, invoke the gods to become your helpers " (Stobaei 
 Sent.). " It is not proper to despise those things of which we 
 shall be in want after the putting aside of the body " (Sexti 
 Sent.). 
 
 The souls that belong to the orders of daimons and heroes, 
 from whom dreams come to men, make, according to Pytha- 
 goras, this most excellent affirmation, that man's most impor- 
 tant privilege is the being able to persuade his soul to either 
 good or bad. The soul of man, he taught, possesses intuition 
 or instinct, mind,* and reasoning faculty, whereas other 
 animals lack the last division. 
 
 The following may serve as examples of the symbolic 
 
 * In the sense in which the word is used in the phrase, " I had a mind to," 
 which includes will and even passion.
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 321 
 
 sayings of Pythagoras ; which are said to be analogous to 
 prophecies, to the Pythian oracles, and to seeds, small in bulk, 
 which produce manifest and extensive effects : 
 
 " It is not good to walk in the dark without any 
 clothing." In obscure or hidden matters do not lay bare 
 your thought. 
 
 " Do not sleep in a grave." The current interpretation of 
 this is, When your parents have left you money, do not grow 
 idle. But this version can, perhaps, be bettered by those who 
 call to mind the injunction, " Let the dead bury their own 
 dead." Plato, too, calls the body a grave of the soul (Crat 
 400 c), probably drawing his doctrine from a Pythagorean 
 source. Philolaus (as recorded by Clem. AL, Strom, iii. p. 403) 
 says, " The ancient theologists and soothsayers testify that 
 the soul is conjoined with the body as a punishment, and is, 
 so to speak, buried in this body." Socrates says (Gorgias, 
 492 e), " We, perhaps, are really dead, as I have heard from 
 one of the wise, that we are now dead, and that the body is 
 our sepulchre." 
 
 " Do not touch the lyre with unwashed hands." The 
 teacher must himself be what he teaches. 
 
 " Sing not your song before a four-footed thing." Cast 
 not your pearls before swine. 
 
 " Do not hold discourse in a reedbed." Do not confide in 
 men who are like reeds shaken by every wind. " Do not write 
 on snow." 
 
 The following ethical maxims are from a Pythagorean 
 collection ascribed to Demophilos, and entitled " Similitudes ; 
 or Life's Medicining " : 
 
 "Life, like a musical instrument, becomes sweeter by a 
 system of both relaxation and tightening up. 
 
 " As a harbour is a refuge to a ship, so is friendship to life. 
 
 " Ridicule, like salt, should be sparingly used. 
 
 " Garments down to the feet impede bodies, property in 
 excess impedes souls. 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " Pleasures must be passed by as if they were sirens, by 
 one who is earnest to look on virtue as a fatherland. 
 
 " As in plants, so in youth, the first growth foretokens the 
 future fruit of virtue. 
 
 " Of life, as of a statue, all the parts ought to be comely. 
 
 " Neither should the altar be removed from the temple, nor 
 compassion from human nature. 
 
 "A loquacious and brutally ignorant man in prayer or 
 sacrifice casts a slur on that which is divine ; the wise man 
 then alone is priest, alone is god-lover, alone knows how to 
 pray.* 
 
 "Whatever, if thou shouldst acquire, thou canst not retain, 
 ask not this of God ; for God's gift is inalienable ; wherefore 
 he will not confer that which thou canst not retain. 
 
 " Be sleepless with regard to thy mental part, for sleep in 
 respect of this is akin to veritable death. 
 
 " God misleads, not from anger, but from our want of 
 perception ; wrath is foreign to God, for wrath is excited by 
 things not in accordance with one's will ; but with God there 
 is naught not in accordance with his will. 
 
 " Naked was a wise man sent forth, in nakedness will he 
 call upon him that sent him ; for to him only that is not 
 burdened with alien matters is God a listener. 
 
 " Other gift greater than virtue it is impossible to receive 
 from God. 
 
 " Oblations and sacrifices convey no honour to God ; votive 
 offerings are no adornment to God ; but the God-inspired 
 mind enduringly conjoins itself to God, for like must needs 
 continually advance to like. 
 
 " It is more grievous to be the slave of passions than of 
 tyrants. 
 
 " It is better to argue more with yourself than with your 
 neighbours. 
 
 * " Pythagoras announced that sacrificers should approach the gods, not only 
 with a body purged from all practice of iniquity, but also with a soul that kept 
 itself pure" (Diod. Sic., Exc., p. 555).
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 323 
 
 " If you always bear in mind that in whatever place your 
 soul may be, and your body accomplish its work, God is 
 present as inspector ; in all your prayers and actions you will 
 be in awe of the spectator from whom nothing can be hidden, 
 and will, moreover, possess divinity as an indweller with you. 
 
 " We ought to seek such husband and children as will abide 
 after the departure of this life. 
 
 " Lives like unto divinity as truly as may be, the indepen- 
 dent and property-less philosopher, and deems the greatest 
 wealth to be the having gained possession of naught of what 
 is another's, or of what is not necessary. For the fresh gain 
 of money expands the lust thereof ever ; but the independence 
 of true well-living is to do no one wrong. 
 
 " Esteem those to be eminently your friends who advan- 
 tage your soul rather than your body. 
 
 " Desire rather that thy comrades should respect thee than 
 fear thee ; for veneration is akin to respect, but hatred to fear. 
 
 " Be aware that no false pretence lies hidden for long. 
 
 " It is not safe to say a word concerning God to those who 
 have become the prey of opinion ; for in sooth to speak truth 
 or falsehood before them brings equal danger. 
 
 " Deem that to be fine training, by which you are enabled 
 to bear the boorishness of the ignorant. 
 
 " A stranger, provided he be righteous, surpasses not only 
 a citizen, but even a kinsman." 
 
 We may call to mind the outcry of the opponents of 
 Pythagoras at this introduction of the higher law ; the follow- 
 ing, also, presented too stern an ideal of freedom for the 
 democratic factions who threw off the yoke of Pythagoras : 
 
 " No one is free who is not master of himself. 
 
 " Every goodly thing gotten is preceded and led up to, by 
 labour with self-mastery. 
 
 " Do what you judge to be morally beautiful, even though 
 by doing it you incur ill-repute ; for a mob is a bad judge of 
 a virtuous deed.
 
 324 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " Do great things without making promises of great 
 things. 
 
 " Since we have our roots, and grow forth out of God, let 
 us cling to our root ; for verily, streams of water, and the 
 plants of the earth also, if cut off from their root, grow 
 withered and rotten. 
 
 " Vigour of soul lies in temperance ; for this is the light of 
 a soul unaffected by passions ; nay, it is much better to die, 
 than through ungovernableness of body to make dark the 
 soul." 
 
 The following are from miscellaneous collections : 
 
 " About the life of the uninstructed, as on a play-actor, are 
 many wrappages that have to be pulled off wrappages of 
 cloudy conceit. 
 
 " The arms of Achilles will not fit Thersites, nor the goods 
 of the soul a fool. 
 
 " As with an obliging friend, it is sweet to grow old in 
 fellowship with goodly thought. 
 
 " Have confidence in virtue like a chaste wife, trust fortune 
 like a fickle jade. 
 
 " We should take nourishment from the contemplative pur- 
 suit of wisdom, up to what measure we may, exactly as from 
 ambrosia and nectar. For undefiled is the sweetness that 
 proceeds therefrom, and it has the power of making the divine 
 element large-souled, and if not eternal, at least versed in 
 eternal things. 
 
 " We render reasonable worship to God, if we make the 
 mind that is in us free from all depravity as from a spot. 
 
 "We should adorn a temple with offerings, but the soul 
 with lessons. 
 
 " As before the great mysteries we have to receive and 
 hand down the small, so before philosophy comes training. 
 
 " The hopes of virtue are own children of the soul, but 
 those of vice bastards. 
 
 "Vain the word of the philosopher, if no mischievous
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS. 325 
 
 affection of man's nature be cured. For as medicine is of no 
 service without it drives out diseases from bodies, so with 
 philosophy, unless it expel the vice of the soul. 
 
 " Men become the best of themselves, when they are walk- 
 ing towards the gods. 
 
 "All things of friends are common, and friendship is 
 equality. 
 
 " It is grievously difficult to walk in many ways of life at 
 once." 
 
 " On being asked in what act men can be like gods, Pytha- 
 goras replied, ' In speaking the truth.' The mages indeed 
 declare with regard to the greatest of the gods, whom they 
 call Oromagdes (Ahura- Mazda), that in his body he is like 
 unto light, in his soul unto truth" (lamblichos). 
 
 " Pythagoras affirmed that there enters into cities first 
 luxury, thereupon satiety, then insolence, and thereafter per- 
 dition. 
 
 "The origin and basis of all good order in states is a 
 righteous disposition of domestic affairs, for states consist of 
 houses. 
 
 " Exact not punishment from those who have done 
 unjustly, for it is enough for them to be brought low by their 
 own evil." 
 
 From these ethical and practical precepts, small as they 
 are in number of words, something may be learned of the 
 religious and moral system of Pythagoras.
 
 326 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF 
 PLATO. 
 
 IF we seek to " unsphere the spirit of Plato " * we undertake a 
 large task, for every great spirit is sphere-like, and cannot be 
 seen all round at one view. Nor can such an orb be rightly 
 unsphered by being unwound like a cocoon, and woven with 
 an alien warp into a critical and analytic web. The silvery 
 threads have their perfect shine, only when they lie entwined 
 in their own organic order and purity. 
 
 But, if on any side we can touch a sphere, the great law of 
 sympathy allows us to enter at that point of contact into its 
 precincts ; and now, if we clarify our own atmosphere, we can 
 catch the beautiful colours of a radiance which is shining in 
 upon us. 
 
 In this country we are professedly Christian ; there is said 
 to be a Christian element in Plato ; here, then, should be an 
 avenue into which Plato's road and our own converge, and in 
 which we might reasonably expect to find a green and 
 pleasant spot abounding in pasture for the pilgrim mind. 
 
 If we enter into Plato's thought by means of such a com- 
 parison, we may be sure that, if the result proves satisfactory 
 under such a test, there will be other regions in Plato's mind 
 which we may safely infer to be worth visiting. And into 
 these at any time we may enter at will, if provided with the 
 passport of interest and appreciation. 
 
 Dr. C. Ackerman, archdeacon at Jena, wrote, in 1835, 
 
 * Milton, " II Penseroso."
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 327 
 
 words which those who look upon Christian doctrines as 
 something different in kind from the religious utterances of 
 noble Gentiles would do well to ponder : " The deeper we 
 penetrate into the writings of the ancients the less can we 
 ward off the conviction that, on the side of doctrine, they 
 truly stand but little behind Christianity. They contain, not 
 only almost all the moral doctrines and sublime sayings which 
 the gospel has given us, but many of these are even more 
 sharply conceived and more beautifully presented in the 
 former than in the latter." 
 
 For the purpose of the present comparison we shall take 
 any words put in the mouth of any of Plato's characters, which 
 are not merely controversial, as Plato's own ; and this on the 
 ground that, whatever the origin of each thought, he would 
 not give expression to any (apart from the momentary 
 necessities of controversy) with which he was not in more or 
 less sympathy himself. 
 
 It has been said that " Plato finds his highest joy in the 
 whole and the unit ; Aristotle in the mass and abundance 
 of sharply defined particulars ; " and that all philosophizing 
 leans to the Platonic or to the Aristotelian school. 
 
 We must, therefore, be prepared, in touching upon the 
 sphere of Plato, to put aside for a while the plodding methods 
 of science ; to turn away from the minute certainties of 
 the senses, and to unchain the rnind for a more daring 
 and extended sweep. We must seek the faith which was in 
 Plato ; that the ideal is not mere subjective phantasy ; that 
 there is a something, called truth, which the mind may not 
 only grasp, and find substantial and organic, but recognize as 
 being its own birthright and sustenance. 
 
 Whether our "builder and maker is God," or is Proto- 
 plasm ; whether man is Nature's secretion, or the spirit of a 
 higher plane, bent beneath a yoke for education, and for 
 a growth which he is free to retard ; on these great questions 
 Plato is never for a moment in doubt. His conception of man
 
 328 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 in polar opposite states the ideally perfect, and the fallen 
 condition, is embodied in one of his most sublime passages: 
 
 " Through many generations, so long as the God's nature 
 within them was yet a sufficiency, they were heedful of the 
 sacred laws, and bore themselves with loving mind toward the 
 kinship of divineness, for their uttermost motives were real 
 and true, and in everywise great ; so that they dealt with 
 meekness conjoined with wisdom in regard to the contin- 
 gencies of fortune, and in their relations one with another. 
 Wherefore, overlooking all but virtue, they little esteemed 
 circumstances as they presented themselves, and bore lightly 
 as a burden the weight of gold or other possessions ; nor 
 were they drawn beneath the intoxication of luxury, or ren- 
 dered intemperate through opulence ; but with soberness they 
 clearly perceived that out of their common love, combined 
 with virtue, all these things would proceed with increase ; 
 whereas to bestow earnest pains and marks of esteem upon 
 material things, would result not only in their decay, but in 
 the ruin of virtue and affection with them. 
 
 "It was owing to such reasoning and to the steadfastness 
 of the divine nature, that they gained increase of all things as 
 we have related. 
 
 "But when the God's portion became extinct in them, 
 through admixture again and again with the prevalence of 
 what was mortal, and the human nature gained the upper 
 hand, then at length they became unable to bear circum- 
 stances as they presented themselves, and fell into deformity 
 of life, and wore an aspect of baseness in the sight of him 
 that can see, losing the fairest of what they had of most 
 honourable, while unto those powerless to discern true life 
 that leads to blessedness, they then bore the appearance most 
 especially of being all-noble and happy, rilled though they 
 were with selfish lust after unfairness and power"* (Critias). 
 
 * The following would seem to be a modern reflection from Plato's luminous 
 picture : " ... A human intellect originally greatly gifted, and capable of high
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 329 
 
 The doctrine is here conveyed that a community of 
 persons, who act wisely and temperately and kindly one to 
 another, and possess steadfastness of character, will find little 
 difficulty in supplying their physical needs. It is, no doubt, 
 an economic fact that waste of force is a consequence of 
 rivalries and contentions, and that a community which could 
 agree and work in harmony might become rich in the supply 
 of every need. Indeed, there are instances which prove the 
 fact. On the contrary, where the religious spirit ceases to be 
 a devout attitude governing every act, and loses itself in 
 ceremonial vagaries, where wholesome life is despised, and 
 bodily needs are treated, not with cheerfulness, as a light 
 burden, but with contempt, the very reverse will be the case. 
 It is also true that over-anxiety about circumstances is not 
 the way to improve them ; for it paralyzes the natural powers. 
 Viewed in this light, the teaching of Jesus is at one with the 
 ideal of Plato, as represented in the quotation above made. 
 Jesus declares a principle ; it is for us, if we desire, to discover 
 its application and verify its basis : 
 
 " Fret not for the life (soul), what ye shall eat ; nor yet for 
 the body, what ye shall put on. . . . Your Father knows that 
 ye have need of these things. But seek his kingdom, and 
 these shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock ; for it is 
 your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom " (Luke 
 xii. 22, 30). 
 
 "Fret not for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye 
 shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. . . . 
 Seek first his (your heavenly Father's) kingdom and righteous- 
 ness, and all these shall be added unto you" (Matt. vi. 25, 33). 
 
 things, but gone utterly astray, partly by its own subtlety, partly by yielding to the 
 temptations of the lower part of its nature, by yielding the spiritual to a keen 
 sagacity of lower things, until it was quite fallen ; and yet fallen in such a way, 
 that it seemed not only to itself, but to mankind, not fallen at all, but wise and 
 good, and fulfilling all the ends of intellect in such a life as ours, and proving, 
 moreover, that earthly life was good, and all that the development of our nature 
 demanded" (Nathaniel Hawthorne, " Septimius ").
 
 330 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 It may seem impossible to apply so ideal a principle to 
 worldly circumstances already in existence, but it is really 
 simple enough. The whole secret lies in the injunction " seek 
 first God's kingdom." That kingdom is love, the true relation- 
 ship of divineness. Were two people only, who are isolated 
 in the worldly struggle, to join hands, and help each other 
 by affectionate thoughtfulness, and a constant sympathy and 
 willingness to give mutual aid in any and every way, there is 
 no doubt whatever that the burden of both would be lightened 
 to an extent beyond anticipation. The blind man can carry 
 the lame, and in return be kept in the right way. 
 
 Plato puts in the mouth of Socrates an appeal which we 
 cannot but regard as own brother to the words of Jesus quoted 
 above : " I go about doing none other thing than persuading 
 you, young and old alike, to take no care for the body, nor for 
 riches, prior to or as zealously as for the soul, telling you how 
 that virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all 
 other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue " 
 (Apol. 30 a). 
 
 The apostolic character of Socrates is even more clearly 
 shown in the following : " Oh, Athenians ! I cleave to you 
 and love you ; but I shall rather obey God than you, and, so 
 long as I breathe and am able, I shall not cease the pursuit of 
 philosophy, and exhorting you, and making myself clear to 
 any one of you with whom I may ever happen to come in 
 contact " (Apol. 29 d). 
 
 Again we find : 
 
 " To be excessively rich and good at the same time is 
 impossible " (Laws, v. 742 e). 
 
 " A rich man will hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven " 
 (Matt. xix. 23). 
 
 " To make much of riches, and, at the same time, fairly 
 win the palm of a temperate life, is an impossibility ; for one 
 or the other must of necessity be held in little care " (Rep., 
 viii. 555 c).
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 331 
 
 This will remind us of the more pointed utterance: 
 " No man can serve two masters ; for either he will hate 
 the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to one, and 
 despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon " 
 (Matt. vi. 24). 
 
 But Mammon, as Plato shows, is very readily taken for God : 
 " Do you think that any one, when brought from the below 
 to the middle, imagines anything else than that he is brought 
 to the above ; and when he stands in the middle and looks 
 down to the place whence he has been brought, will he imagine 
 that he is anywhere else than above, while he has not even 
 seen the true above ? . . . Such as are without experience of 
 wisdom and virtue, and are always taking part in banquetings 
 and such like things, are carried, as it appears, to the below, 
 and back again to the middle, and there they wander through- 
 out life, but they never pass beyond this and look up towards 
 the truly above, or are drawn to it ; nor are they ever filled 
 with real essential being " (Rep., ix. 584 d, 586 a). 
 
 The comparison between the spiritual and the corporeal 
 is continued still further by Plato. The following passages 
 declare the supremacy of the soul over the body, and of 
 virtuous purpose over untoward circumstance. After referring 
 to the inherence to each particular of the physical world of 
 a something which is injurious, as blindness to the eyes, 
 disease to the body, rust to the metal, he turns to the soul : 
 " Is there not something which renders the soul evil ? Yes 
 injustice, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. . . . Let us at 
 no time say that the soul shall be ever a whit the nearer 
 brought to destruction through burning fever, or any other 
 disease, or by slaughter, not even though the whole body be 
 cut into the smallest parts possible, until some one prove that 
 through these sufferings of the body the soul herself becomes 
 more unjust and unholy " (Rep., x. c. 10, 610 b). 
 
 " That which is divine is beautiful, wise, good, and every- 
 thing of this kind. By these the wing of the soul is most of
 
 33 2 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 all nourished and increased, while by what is base and vile 
 and the other contraries, it is brought to decay and perishes " 
 (Phaedr., 246 e). 
 
 " A man's soul is, after the gods, the most divine of all his 
 possessions, a possession which is most his own. . . . The third 
 is the honour of the body according to nature " (Laws, v. 726, 
 728 d). 
 
 " With respect to things just and unjust, and honourable 
 and base, and good and evil, concerning which we are now 
 taking counsel, ought we to follow the opinion of the multi- 
 tude, and to pay respect thereto, or the opinion of the one, 
 whoever it be that professes knowledge, whom we ought to 
 reverence and respect rather than the whole mob of others ? 
 One whom, if we fail to follow, we shall corrupt and maim 
 that part of ourselves which would be made better by justice, 
 but is ruined by injustice ? . . . Do we think that to be of less 
 value than the body, whatever part of what is ours it may be 
 about which injustice and justice are concerned ? ... It is 
 not mere living that ought to be made of much account, but 
 living well " (Crito, vii., viii., 47 c, e, 48 b). 
 
 " Suffer any one to despise thee, as without understanding, 
 and to fling at thee the mud of contumely if he pleases ; and 
 by Zeus, cheerfully let him strike that ignominious blow ; for 
 thou wilt suffer nothing terrible, if thou art in reality honest 
 and good, and a practiser of virtue " (Gorgias, Ixxxiii. 52 c). 
 
 " Is there any one whom it avails ... to take gold unjustly, 
 supposing something of this kind befalls, that in taking the 
 money he is at the same time enslaving the best part of him- 
 self to the worst ? . . . But if he enslaves the most divine part 
 of himself to the most godless and polluted part, is he not 
 wretched, and taking a gift of gold to far more dreadful ruin 
 than Eriphyle when she received a necklace for her husband's 
 life?" (Rep., ix. 589 d). 
 
 We scarcely need quote the obvious parallels : " Be not 
 afraid of them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 333 
 
 soul ; but rather be afraid of one able to destroy- both soul 
 and body in a gehenna " (Matt. x. 28). 
 
 " Whosoever would save his soul, shall lose it ; and who- 
 soever shall lose his soul for my sake shall find it. For what 
 shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world, and 
 forfeit his soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
 soul?" (Matt. xvi. 25). 
 
 The following goes further in its assertion of the supremacy 
 of the inward part, in its triumphant carelessness as to nominal 
 stigmas and the conventional appearance of evil : " Blessed 
 are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate 
 you from their company, and reproach you, and cast out 
 your name as evil, for the son of man's sake " (Luke vi. 22). 
 
 " Amongst a multitude of arguments, whilst the rest are 
 being refuted, this one alone remains unshaken, that we ought 
 to beware of committing wrong rather than of being wronged, 
 and that above all a man's care ought to be not to seem to be 
 good, but to be good, in private life and public life alike '* 
 (Gorgias, 527 b). 
 
 " He who commits injustice is ever more wretched than 
 he that suffers it, and he that is not punished than he that is " 
 (Gorgias, 479 e). 
 
 According to the teachings of Jesus, a man may not only 
 choose to be wronged rather than to wrong another, but may 
 rejoice in being wronged, provided the evil said against him is 
 false. 
 
 The comparisons between Plato and Jesus suggest very 
 forcibly the difference between the slow and reasoned manner 
 of the philosopher and writer, and the impassioned abruptness 
 and poetry of the preacher and seer. 
 
 " One who is injured ought not, as the multitude thinks 
 to return the injury. . . . To do evil in return when one has 
 been evil-intreated, is that right or not ? ... It is not right 
 to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however one 
 may have suffered from him " (Crito, x.).
 
 334 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 This is a logical deduction from the broad principle that 
 to do evil is not right. The sacred passion of the Christian 
 spirit transcends even this lofty standard, and perhaps by 
 disclosing the gleam of a more heavenly ideal, enables some 
 to come up in practice more nearly to the level of virtue than 
 would have been the case had a higher peak of aspiration 
 never been revealed : " Ye heard that it was said, Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy. But I say unto 
 you, love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you." 
 
 There is a curious parallel between the Platonic and the 
 Christian respect for established law, as a correspondence to 
 perfect law. Jesus says, " Think not that I came to destroy 
 the law or the prophets ; I came not to destroy, but to make 
 full " (Matt. v. 17). [Cf. " Love is the making full of the law," 
 Rom. xiv. 10]. Plato personifies violated earthly laws, as 
 indignant with their violator, and saying, " Our brothers, the 
 laws in Hades, will not receive thee kindly, knowing that 
 thou didst endeavour so far as in thee lay to destroy us " 
 (Crito, xvi. 54 c). 
 
 The following passages, taken in pairs, are mutually illus- 
 trative : 
 
 " Blest are they that hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness ; for they will be satisfied " (Matt. v. 6). 
 
 " They who have a yearning according to the soul for 
 there are those who yearn in their soul still more than in their 
 bodies find their object in whatever it is meet for the soul 
 to have conceived and to swell with. What is it that is thus 
 meet ? Thoughtful character and every other virtue " (Sym- 
 posium, xxvii. 209 a). 
 
 " They were good by being sprung from the good " 
 (Menexenus). Cf. Horat " Fortes creantur fortibus." 
 
 " Every good tree brings forth good fruit" (Matt. vii. 17). 
 
 " Men are willing to have their feet and hands cut off, if 
 their own~members seem to them to be an evil " (Sympos., 
 xxiv. 205 e).
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 335 
 
 " If thy right hand causes thee to offend, cut it off and 
 cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy 
 members perish, and not that thy whole body go away into 
 a gehenna " (Matt v. 30). 
 
 " That which is not seen continues always the same, but 
 that which is seen never continues the same " (Phaedo, xxvi. 
 79 a). 
 
 " We look not at the things which are seen, but at the 
 things which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are 
 for a time, but the things which are not seen are eternal " 
 (2 Cor. iv. 1 8). 
 
 " Holding the soul to be immortal, and able to bear all 
 evil and all good alike, we shall always persevere in the road 
 that leads upwards" (Rep., x. 621 c). 
 
 " Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the 
 things that are upon the earth " (Col. iii. 2). 
 
 To the impassioned peace of the primitive Christian ideal, 
 as to the reasoned calm of the philosophic spirit, the carping 
 of wavering minds, the uncertain murmurs of selfish dissatis- 
 faction, the nagging of argumentativeness, and the protrusion 
 of an irrepressible personality are foreign and objectionable. 
 " Be not of unsettled mind . . . but seek God's kingdom " 
 (Luke xii. 29, 31). "Why were ye reasoning on the way? 
 They held their peace ; for they were disputing one with 
 another on the way, who is the greater" (Mark ix. 33, 34). 
 " Why reason ye among yourselves, ye of little faith ? " 
 (Matt. xvi. 8). " What reason ye in your hearts ? " (Luke v. 
 22). " Do all things without murmurings and reasonings, that 
 ye may become blameless and simple, children of God " (Phil, 
 ii. 15). 
 
 With Plato's hero, the Truth is that which stills the un- 
 quiet personality, the Truth is the haven of the kingdom of 
 peace : 
 
 " Whenever any one should believe in any argument as 
 being true, being a person that has no skill in the art of
 
 336 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 reasoning, and then directly afterwards it should appear to 
 
 him to be false, at one time being so, and at another time 
 
 not, and so on different and different again ; and this is 
 
 especially the case with those who keep up a discussion over 
 
 mere controversy ; you know that they end in thinking that 
 
 they have become exceedingly wise, and are the only people 
 
 that have remarked how in things and reasonings alike there 
 
 is not a particle of soundness or stability, but all things that 
 
 exist are swaying up and down, and remain for no time in 
 
 any state of permanence. . . . These wranglers, when they 
 
 are arguing any point, care nothing about the real condition 
 
 of the subject under discussion, but are sedulously exerting 
 
 themselves to make what they have themselves advanced 
 
 look well to those that are present. ... I shall not be 
 
 anxious to make what I say appear true to those present, 
 
 except as a result by the way, but I shall be anxious above 
 
 all to make it seem to have such a basis to myself. . . . For 
 
 yourselves, if you will be guided by me, pay little heed to 
 
 Socrates, but much more to the truth " (Phaedo, xxxix., xl. 
 
 90 b, 91 a, b). 
 
 The concluding paragraph here affords a gleaming glimpse 
 of the enfranchisement from personal anxiety which a sincere 
 motive empowers ; the full sense of the glory of release from 
 conventional responsibility is conveyed in the words, "Ye 
 will know the truth, and the truth will make you free " (John 
 viii. 32). 
 
 The following passages seem to reflect light upon one 
 another, in regard to the acknowledgment of the legacies of 
 forerunners, the accumulation of experience, and the new 
 extraction of its essence, as being factors in the elevation of 
 man : 
 
 " Verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous 
 men longed to see those things which ye behold, and did not 
 see them ; and to hear those things which ye hear, and did 
 not hear" (Matt. xiii. 17).
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 337 
 
 " The saying of Epicharmos, ' What two men said before, 
 I by myself am able to say ' " (Gorgias, Ixi. 505 d). 
 
 " The elements themselves cannot be defined or known, 
 but only appreciated by the senses, whereas compounds of 
 them can be both known and expressed and apprized by true 
 judgment. . . . Science is true judgment in conjunction with 
 reason. . . . Have we then thus, on this very day, discovered 
 what of old many a sage did seek, and grew old before he 
 found ? " (Theaetetus, 202 b). 
 
 Perhaps this view may help to clear up the meaning of 
 a somewhat obscure passage : " The law and the prophets 
 were until John ; since that time the gospel of the kingdom 
 of God is preached " (Luke xvi. 16). A new inspiration 
 revives what preceded it, and by so doing, and enlarging it 
 as well, makes a new creation greater than anything that has 
 preceded it. 
 
 We have referred to the differences between philosopher 
 and seer in handling great subjects. The following is an 
 excellent illustration of such a comparison : 
 
 " Those who are found to have lived a holy life are emanci- 
 pated and set at large from the regions in the earth as from 
 a prison, and make their way upwards to the pure abode. . . . 
 For the sake of these things we ought to use every endeavour 
 to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life : for the reward 
 is noble and the hope great. To affirm positively, however, 
 that these things are as I have described, does not become 
 a man endowed with mind ; but that either this or something 
 of the kind takes place in relation to our souls and their 
 habitations since the soul appears to be assuredly an 
 immortal thing this appears to me to be a seemly belief, 
 and worthy the hazard for one that deems that so things 
 are : for the hazard is noble, and one should allure one's 
 self with such things as with enchantments" (Phaedo, Ixii., 
 Ixiii. 114 b, c). 
 
 This is the reasonable hope of the philosopher, expressed 
 VOL. I. z
 
 338 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 with the glow of real feeling and belief. But, as a poet 
 has pointed out, " Hope itself is fear viewed on the sunny 
 side." Jesus never expresses hope, never teaches hope ; the 
 heart is not either to allure or to trouble itself with hope 
 in matters of spiritual certainty. " Let not your heart be 
 troubled : have confidence in God, and have confidence in 
 me. In the house of my Father there are many mansions : 
 were it not so, I would have told you" (John xiv. i, 2). 
 
 The philosopher is like a kindly brother talking with 
 brothers ; the prophet is like an angel speaking tenderly to 
 children. 
 
 Plato stretches out his arms as far as philosophic certainty 
 or reasonableness can go ; his mind is strongly convinced 
 that the ideal is not a castle in the air, but a city having 
 foundations. But one who can see the spiritual city is certain 
 in quite another way ; he speaks with glowing simplicity and 
 assurance that needs no proof, with the boundless trust of a 
 fond child saying, " I love my mother." 
 
 In the following there is no more question of the existence 
 of spirit than of flesh : " That which has been born of the 
 flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is 
 spirit. . . . Ye must be born from above [or, afresh]. . . . We 
 speak that which we know, and testify to that which we have 
 seen " (John iii. 6, 7, 1 1). 
 
 The calm philosophic argument will compare with this 
 fervid assurance : " As to the possession by the dead of some 
 sense of what goes on here the best souls divine, while the 
 worst deny it. Now the divinations of godlike men are more 
 authoritative than of those who are the reverse " (Epist, ii. 
 311 c). 
 
 Plato cannot be regarded as a philosopher only ; he is of 
 the godlike men who divine what is beyond earthly philo- 
 sophy. As Goethe presents him, " Plato is related to the 
 world as a spirit of the blest, who is pleased to be its guest 
 for a time." When he speaks of the soul, it is not with the
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 339 
 
 cold assurance of reason only but with some serious sense of 
 reality, a sense full of glow or full of awe. Of " the soul's 
 ascent," he says, " God knows whether it be true " (Rep., vii. 
 
 Plato, with the simplicity of religion, sympathizes with 
 good wherever he finds it, as when he quotes the words of an 
 old poet, a prayer of far-seeing faith : " King Zeus, give us 
 good things, when we pray for them, and when we do not ; 
 and keep from us evil things even if we pray for them." 
 
 Plato, in the mouth of Socrates, relates a fable of the 
 primeval time before the division of the divine sovereignty, 
 according to Homer, between three elementary deities sky, 
 water, and earth. " A very beautiful tale it is," says Socrates, 
 " which you will consider a fable (myth), as I think, but 
 I a tale ; for what I am about to tell you, I tell you as being 
 true." The fable is, that during the reign of Cronos, the 
 lives of mortals were judged while they were still in the 
 flesh, on the very day on which they were about to die, 
 and by living judges. This led to injustice, and Zeus 
 introduced a new rule, thus: "'Sentences are badly awarded, 
 because those in process of judgment are judged clothed, 
 inasmuch as they are judged while living. Many, therefore, 
 whose souls are depraved are clad about with beautiful bodies, 
 nobility of birth, and riches ; and whenever the judgment 
 takes place, many witnesses come in their behalf, to testify 
 that they have lived justly. Hence the judges are awed by 
 these environments, and moreover they too pass sentence 
 when clothed, for over their soul do their eyes, ears, and 
 whole body hang like a veil. . . . Men ought to be judged 
 unclad of all these things ; they must be judged after they 
 are dead : the judge, too, must be unclad and dead, and must 
 examine with his soul the soul of each immediately after 
 death, forsaken of all his kindred, and leaving behind upon 
 the earth all that which is ornament, in order that the judg- 
 ment may be just " (Gorgias, Ixxix. 522 e).
 
 340 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 This fable, which recalls the task of the assessors as set 
 forth in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, must remind us also 
 of a later fable which conveys the very same moral, that of 
 the possible absolute reversal in Hades of earth's judgment 
 upon a man. In the fable of Dives and Lazarus, the rich 
 man has many friends who, for the sake of his sumptuous 
 entertainments, would have been ready to give excellent 
 testimony to his virtues before any human judge. But Dives 
 seems to have done nothing else but make merry, and in the 
 pursuit of selfish pleasure could not even find time to consider 
 whether the fragments from his table might not well be given 
 to a poor helpless creature who lay outside his gate, on whom 
 even dogs took compassion. When the angels come, repre- 
 sentatives of the judgment which is not blinded by earthly 
 advantages, they bear away the soul of Dives to a Hades 
 as painful as the life of poor Lazarus had been, who in his 
 patient endurance of trial has developed a soul worthy of a 
 lofty place, and has accordingly been borne to a Hades of 
 comfort. 
 
 The cry of Dives to Lazarus has in Plato an extended 
 suggestiveness. Many have believed that the penance pre- 
 pared for evil doers is the slow and arduous process of 
 undoing their own work, and of obtaining a hearty and willing 
 forgiveness from those they have wronged. 
 
 As to those who have led wicked lives, when they reach 
 the Acherusian lake, the general receptacle of souls, "they 
 call on those whom they injured, and entreat and implore 
 these to permit them to go out into the lake, and to receive 
 them, . . . and they do not cease from their sufferings until 
 they have won over those whom they have injured " (Phaedo, 
 1 14 a). 
 
 "You will never be neglected by the judgment of the 
 gods ; yea, though you were so small as to sink into the 
 depths of the earth, or so lofty as to fly up to heaven ; but 
 you will suffer from them the fitting punishment, whether you
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 341 
 
 abide here, or depart to Hades, or are carried to a place still 
 more wild than these " (Laws, x. c. 13). 
 
 Punishment in Plato's view was not arbitrary, or for 
 punishment's sake, but natural and appropriate sequence to 
 crime. If you sow wild oats, you must live on the porridge. 
 "The greatest punishment is the becoming similar to bad 
 men " (Laws, v. 728 b). The belief in a retribution closely 
 allied with the crime has taken a strong root in the popular 
 mind. Plato cites with evident feeling "the account, which 
 many of those who are earnestly interested in the rites of the 
 initiates concerning such matters have heard, and strongly 
 believe, that for such persons [murderers] punishment comes 
 in Hades, and that the necessity is on them to come hither 
 again and pay the full penalty according to nature, namely 
 of suffering from another the very thing each one himself did, 
 and under such a destiny to find the termination of his then 
 life " (Laws, ix. 870 d). 
 
 " We must not let the poet say that those are wretched 
 who are suffering punishment, and that it is God who does 
 these things. But if it were to be said that the wicked 
 deserved correction, wretched beings indeed, and in suffering 
 punishment were being benefited by the deity, we must let 
 the assertion pass. We must, however, by all means oppose 
 its being said that deity, who is good, is the cause of ills to 
 any one " (Rep., ii. 380 a). 
 
 To the woman taken in adultery, Jesus says " Nor do 
 I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." (John viii. n. 
 Doubtful text.) To the man made whole, he says, " Sin no 
 more, lest something worse befall thee " (John v. 14). In 
 Plato (Critias, i.) we find the same beautiful appreciation of 
 punishment as discipline, in the prayer to God to inflict on 
 us suitable punishment : " The right punishment for one 
 out of tune is to make him play in tune." 
 
 The following carries faith still further : " Shall we not 
 agree that whatsoever from the gods befalls the god-beloved
 
 342 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 man, all befalls as the best possible, unless there attach to 
 him some necessary ill from prior sin ? ... If the just man 
 comes to be in poverty, maladies, or any other of seeming 
 evils, these things will issue to him in something good, either 
 living or dead " * (Rep., x. 612 e). 
 
 Side by side with this may be set the familiar words in 
 which so many have found comfort : " We know that all 
 things work together for good to them that love God " 
 (Rom. viii. 28). 
 
 Here is a brighter picture still, philosophy ascending into 
 faith, and reason into spiritual instinct : 
 
 " While we live, we shall thus, as it seems, draw nearest 
 to knowledge, if to the utmost we hold no intercourse or 
 communion with the body, saving for absolute necessity, nor 
 become overcharged with its nature, but purify ourselves 
 therefrom, until God himself shall loose our bonds. And thus 
 being pure people far removed from the foolishness of body, 
 we shall, we may reasonably expect, be with people like unto 
 ourselves, and learn through our very selves the absolute, and 
 that probably is the truth ; for it is not in law for the impure 
 to reach up to the pure. . . . The journey into the far country 
 which is now appointed me is set out upon with good hope, 
 as it would be by any man who thinks that his mind is 
 
 * An ill-appreciated modern thinker has thus expressed the same, if not 
 a larger faith : 
 
 " I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their 
 exteriors ; and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another 
 hearing, and the voice another voice ; 
 
 " I do not doubt that the passionately wept deaths of young men are provided 
 for ; and that the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are 
 provided for ; 
 
 " (Did you think Life was so well provided for and Death, the purport of all 
 Life, is not well provided for ?) 
 
 " I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horror of them no 
 matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, 
 to the minutest points ; 
 
 " I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, anywhere, at any time, is 
 provided for, in the inherences of things ; 
 
 " I do not think Life provides for all ... but I believe Heavenly Death 
 provides for all " (" Passage to India ").
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 343 
 
 brought into a state of something like purification. . . . Would 
 it not be ridiculous for a man who, during his life, kept 
 himself in such a state as to live in the closest proximity to 
 death, when this death comes up to him, to be disturbed ? 
 . . . Shall one who in reality loves wisdom, and strongly 
 grasps this very hope, that he shall nowhere else obtain it in 
 any way worthy of the name save in Hades, be disturbed at 
 dying, and not go thither with joy ? One must needs think 
 that it would be with joy were he in reality a philosopher ; for 
 he will strongly hold this opinion, that he will nowhere else 
 but there attain wisdom in purity ; and if this be so, would it 
 not be highly irrational if such a man were to be afraid of 
 death ? " (Phaedo, xi., xii., 67 a, c, d, 68 a). 
 
 Plato's picture of the State within man is full of instruc- 
 tion, and leads us on to an appreciation of the meaning of the 
 kingdom of heaven within us : 
 
 " When a man has the form of that which is most excel- 
 lent, naturally weak in his soul, so that he is unable to govern 
 the creatures within himself, but ministers to them, he is able 
 only to learn what flatters them. ... In order then that such 
 an one may be governed under a like rule with the most 
 excellent man, we say that he must be the subject of the one 
 who is most excellent, and who has within himself the divine 
 governing principle. Not at all with the idea that the 
 government should be to the hurt of the subject, but on the 
 ground of its being best for every one to be under the govern- 
 ance of one divine and wise, above all if he possess that ruler 
 as his own within himself. But if not, then as a superinten- 
 dent from without, in order that so far as possible we may 
 all be alike and friends, as under one and the same govern- 
 ment. Law itself, too, plainly shows that such a thing is in 
 its design, for it comes to the aid of all in the city ; as is like- 
 wise the case with the government of children in not allowing 
 them to be free until we have established in them a proper 
 government, as in a city ; and after tending that which is
 
 344 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 best in them, by the same quality in ourselves, we establish, 
 instead of our own rule and government, a like guardian and 
 governor in each of them, and then at length we set him 
 free. ... It is by looking to the State which is within him- 
 self, and taking care that nothing of what is there be moved 
 out of its place through fulness of possession or through 
 scantiness, and by governing in such a way, that a man will 
 add to his possession and spend out of it to the extent of his 
 ability. 
 
 " Having regard to honours likewise in the same manner, 
 of some he will willingly partake and taste, whichever he may 
 judge will render him a better man. But as for those which 
 he thinks would dissolve that soul which subsists within him, 
 from them he will fly both in private and public. 
 
 " He will not be willing then to take a part in political 
 affairs, if he really cares for this? Decidedly, in the State 
 which is in his own, but verily not equally so in his fatherland, 
 unless on the contingency of a peculiar divine fortune. I 
 understand : you mean in the State we now went through the 
 building of, which exists in our conversations, but I think is 
 not to be found on earth. But perhaps in heaven its pattern 
 is in being for any one who desires to see it, and seeing, to 
 establish his own self. But it matters nothing whether it does 
 or will exist anywhere ; for he would perform the duties of 
 this State alone, and of none other" (Rep., ix. 590 c, 591 e). 
 
 With Jesus, the State or kingdom within is the kingdom 
 of heaven : " Being asked when the kingdom of God was 
 coming, he answered, The kingdom of God comes not by 
 close observation, nor will folk say, Lo here ! or, There ! for 
 behold, the kingdom of God is within you " (Luke xvii. 20). 
 If that vision is become dull, which once for a while was 
 made so bright, we must console ourselves with Plato's wise 
 observation, that " the idea of the good is the ultimate object 
 of vision, and hard to be seen " (Rep., vii. 517). 
 
 The position of mediator taken up by Jesus, as one under
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 345 
 
 the chrism of the Spirit of God, is thus understood by Plato : 
 " The whole daimonkind is between God and Mortal. ... It 
 interprets and plies with messages to gods of men's matters 
 and to men of gods' matters, bearing from men supplications 
 and sacrifices, from gods commandments and requitals of 
 sacrifices. Being in the middle between both, it makes the 
 completion, so that the universe is reciprocally bound together 
 with itself. Thereby proceeds every kind of prophecy, ... for 
 god is not mingled with man, but by the medium described is 
 carried on all intercourse and the commune of gods as brought 
 unto men, whether waking or sleeping alike. He that is wise 
 in respect of such things is a daimonic man, while he that is 
 wise in anything else, or in respect of certain arts or handi- 
 crafts, is mechanical merely " (Sympos., 202 e). The philo- 
 sopher is not the man who is prophetically or daimonically 
 wise ; " those who philosophize are those between the wise 
 and the ignorant " (Sympos.). 
 
 The following passages present this daimonic element 
 within us, as seen in different aspects, in relation to the body, 
 to the exit of the soul, to character, to dream, to divination, 
 to transmigration, to angelic incarnation : 
 
 " When a large and soul-overpowering corporeal part 
 becomes conjoined with a small and weak mental part, . . . 
 the motions of the more powerful province prevail and enlarge 
 what is their own, and by making the region of the soul dull, 
 unteachable, and oblivious, induce that greatest of diseases, 
 ignorance. There is one safety for both, not to move the 
 soul without body, nor body without soul, that the twain by 
 mutual requital may become equilibrated and healthy " (Tim., 
 88 a). 
 
 " He who neglects his soul, will make a lame passage 
 through life, and again come into Hades ineffectual and with- 
 out understanding " (Tim., 44 c). 
 
 " There is nothing, but the soul, that causes each and all of 
 us to be in this life the very thing that we are" (Laws, xii. 959 a).
 
 346 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " Giving the soul at night a course of life of a modest 
 character, with the power of divination in dream, to make up 
 for its lack of reason and wisdom " (Tim., 71 d). 
 
 " No one in his ordinary senses participates in inspired and 
 true divination, but only when fettered in the force of his 
 wisdom either in sleep or by some disorder, or when distraught 
 by some ecstatic passion " (Tim., 71 e). 
 
 " Whatever bad habit it had acquired, the soul, according 
 to the analogy of the original birth of the habit, should pass 
 into a brute nature corresponding thereto, and in its changes 
 should not cease from labours, until by following up the course 
 in itself of the same and corresponding quality, and mastering 
 by reason its turbulent and irrational part, ... it should 
 arrive at the form of its first and best disposition " (Tim., 
 42 c). 
 
 Clement of Alexandria (Strom., i. 15) alleges that, accord- 
 ing to Plato, the barbarians " think that good souls, on quitting 
 the super-celestial region, submit to come to this Tartarus, and 
 assuming a body, share in all the ills which are involved in 
 birth, from their solicitude for the race of men." These are 
 the Messianic individuals who make laws and divulge philo- 
 sophy, " than which no greater boon ever came from the gods 
 to the race of men, or will come " (Tim., 47 a). 
 
 The history of the battle ground in the soul is thus pre- 
 sented by Plato : " Sometimes . . . some of the cupidities get 
 destroyed, while others are dethroned, because of the coming 
 into play of a certain modesty in the youth's soul, and once 
 again he gets restored to order. And, again, there are other 
 cupidities, allied to the dethroned ones, that gain secret 
 nurture, and, for lack of experience of a father's tending, grow 
 numerous and masterful. They are wont then to draw him 
 towards the same intimacies as before, and, through their secret 
 connections, they give interior birth to a multitude. Even- 
 tually, I think, they are wont to seize upon the citadel of the 
 youth's soul, since they perceive it to be vacant of discipline,
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 347 
 
 virtuous pursuits, and true principles the best watchmen and 
 guardians over the rational part of men dear to God. And, 
 then, indeed, false and vagabond considerations and opinions 
 rush up in the stead of these, and take possession of the 
 identical region in such a man^" (Rep., viii. 560 a). 
 
 There is the most singular similarity, not only in the idea, 
 but even in the metaphoric form of expression, between the 
 passage just quoted and the following parable of the inmates 
 of the house or citadel of the soul : " When the unclean spirit 
 is gone out of the man, it goes through dry places, seeking 
 rest, and finds it not. Then it says, I will return into my 
 house whence I came out ; and having come, it finds it 
 vacant, swept, and garnished. Then it goes and takes with 
 itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter 
 in and dwell there ; and the last state of that man becomes 
 worse than the first " (Matt. xii. 43). 
 
 " To conquer one's self is the first and most excellent of 
 all conquests, while to be worsted by one's self is the most 
 infamous and base of all things " (Laws, i. 626 e). 
 
 This is in special harmony with early Buddhist teachings. 
 If we read metaphorically the saying " A man's foes are they 
 of his own household " (Matt. x. 36), we may find the same 
 thought. 
 
 As the stream of life is ceaseless, so must judgment or 
 spiritual adjustment be incessant. It is always a judgment 
 day when an individual turns decidedly to the right or to the 
 left. But as we are familiar with number, yet know not 
 infinity ; as our eyes can apprehend the stages of time, while 
 they can perceive only as in a mist the vast gliding flow of 
 eternity, our pictures of the judgment are local, temporal and 
 made up of numbers. The after-death realization of one's 
 self and one's purposes must form an important moment, a 
 new and exacting condition of judgment. Of the more 
 familiar conception Plato presents the following pictorial 
 embodiment :
 
 348 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 "Er,* the son of Armenios, by descent a Pamphylian, 
 happening on a time to die in battle, when the dead were on 
 the tenth day carried off, and already corrupted, was taken up 
 sound : and being carried home, as he was about to be buried 
 on the twelfth day, and was laid on the funeral pile, revived ; 
 and when he was come to himself, he told what he saw over 
 there. He said that after his soul had gone forth, he went 
 with many others, and they arrived at a certain ghostly place, 
 wherein were two chasms in the soil, contiguous to each other, 
 and others in the heavens up above over against them, and the 
 judges sat between these. And when they gave judgment, 
 they commanded the just to go on the right hand and 
 upwards through the heaven, having invested with certain 
 signs on the forefront those that had been judged ; but the 
 unjust they ordered to the left and downwards, and these had 
 behind them in like manner the marks of all they had done" 
 (Rep., x. 6i4b). 
 
 With this we may compare the symbolism of the great 
 Assize, as follows : 
 
 " And thou Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto heaven? 
 thou shalt be thrust down unto Hades " (Matt. xi. 23). 
 
 " When the son of man shall have come in his glory, and 
 all the angels with him, then will he sit upon the throne of his 
 glory, and before him will be gathered together all the nations ; 
 and he will separate them one from another, as the shepherd 
 separates the sheep from the goats ; and will set the sheep on 
 his right hand, but the goats on the left " (Matt. xxv. 31). 
 
 The disciples of Jesus cry out for fear of an apparition 
 (Matt. xiv. 26) ; Plato also has a certain ghost-belief. If the 
 soul's way of light be toward the heavenly heights, the dark 
 way is back again towards earth, or lower still : 
 
 " Can the soul in sooth, the invisible part, that which goes 
 to some such different place, goodly, pure, invisible, unto 
 
 * This Er is said by Clement Al. (Strom., v. 282) to be Zoroaster. The story 
 is probably derived from the Zoroastrian book of Arda.
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 349 
 
 Hades to say true, beside the good and wise deity, can this 
 soul of ours, being such as it is and with such endowment, 
 on its liberation from the body be forthwith dissipated and 
 destroyed, as the generality of men affirm ? Far from it. ... 
 If the soul is detached from the body polluted and impure, as 
 having constantly held communion with the body, and having 
 served and loved it, and been bewitched by it, through lusts 
 and pleasures, so as to think that there is nothing real save 
 what is corporeal, which one can touch and see, and drink 
 and eat, and employ for sensual purposes ; but as regards 
 what is dark and invisible to the eyes, which is intelligible 
 and apprehensible by philosophy, if it has been accustomed 
 to hate, fear, and shun this, do you think that a soul in such a 
 state can depart from the body by itself, and uncontaminated ? 
 It will, I opine, be clasped round with the corporeal, which 
 the intercourse and habitual association with the body, through 
 the constant linking together of the two and the great care 
 paid to the body, have made second nature to the soul. We 
 must opine that that is ponderous and heavy, earthly and 
 visible, by the possession of which such a soul is weighed 
 down, and drawn again unto the visible plane, through fear of 
 the invisible and of Hades, wandering to and fro, as it is said, 
 around the monuments and the tombs, about which, moreover, 
 certain shadowy phantoms of souls have been seen, being such 
 images as such souls produce as have not purely got free, but 
 partake of the visible, on which account also it is that they 
 become seen. Not that these are the souls of the good, but 
 of the worthless, which are compelled to wander about such 
 places, paying the penalty of their former way of life, which 
 was evil ; and they continue wandering until, through the 
 desire of the corporeal nature that closely accompanies them, 
 they are again immured in a body" (Phaedo, xxix. 80 d ; 
 xxx. 8 1 b). 
 
 " In consequence of the soul's forming the same opinions 
 with the body and taking pleasure in the same things, it is
 
 350 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 compelled, I imagine, to become addicted to the same habits 
 and the same nurture, so that it can never pass into Hades in 
 a state of purity, but must invariably go forth infected by the 
 body, so as soon again to fall into another body, and to grow 
 up as if it were sown " (Phaedo, xxxiii. 83 d). 
 
 " The soul comes to Hades possessed of nought else than 
 its education and nurture, which, even at the very inception 
 of its migration thither, are said to be of the greatest benefit 
 or detriment to the dead. For it is said that each person 
 when dead is accompanied by the particular daimon that was 
 assigned to him during life, who proceeds to conduct him to 
 some place where people have to be gathered together and 
 submitted to trial, and thereafter go on to Hades with that 
 guide, whose instructions are to conduct them hence thither. 
 . . . The well-ordered and wise soul both follows on and is 
 not ignorant of its present, but that which by reason of lusts 
 clings to the body, flutters about it and about its visible place 
 for a long time distraught, until after much resistance and 
 with much suffering, it is led away by force and with difficulty 
 at the hands of the appointed daimon. It wanders to and fro 
 oppressed with every kind of helplessness, until certain periods 
 of time have elapsed, and when these are fulfilled, it is carried 
 of necessity into the abode that is proper for it. The soul, on 
 the other hand, that has passed through life with purity and 
 control, meets with gods for companions and guides, and 
 dwells in the place fitted for its particular self " (Phaedo, Ivii. 
 107 d, 1 08 a). 
 
 There is a curious half-confused reference, probably the 
 refracted ray of some mystical utterance, to a mission of Jesus 
 to spirits in prison : " In the flesh he was put to death, in the 
 spirit he was made living, in which he went and preached 
 even unto the spirits in prison." It is interesting to compare 
 Plato's notion of a spirit in prison : " The saying in the 
 mystical doctrines that we men are in a kind of prison, and 
 that one ought not either to break himself loose or escape
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 351 
 
 from it, appears to me something great and yet not easy to 
 see through " (Phaedo, vi. 62 b). 
 
 Plato's reference to the " mystical doctrines," as to a sort 
 of corpus of divinity then accessible, is somewhat perplexing. 
 But the traditions, whether oral or literary, of the religious 
 mysteries of Greece form ground upon which there is not a 
 very clear light. There is a curious blending of an Orphic 
 and Pythagorean stream of spiritual lore, and it may be that 
 its most considerable part was so jealously guarded as to have 
 become lost. In any case, Plato's relatedness to the Hebrew 
 oracles was a standing puzzle to the Church fathers, the ex- 
 planation of which was sought in an acquaintance made during 
 his Egyptian sojourn with Hebrew Rabbis and their scriptures. 
 An " Atticizing Moses " was a name given to him, and con- 
 trariwise Celsus averred that Jesus borrowed his best sayings 
 from Plato, and that the whole system of Christian doctrine 
 consists of Platonic dogmas, in part misunderstood, and in 
 part perverted. Plato avowedly derives one of his ethical 
 illustrations from a Phoenician myth, and the most satisfactory 
 solution of such knotty points is to believe that there was a 
 much fuller sympathy between the guardians of the lamp of 
 faith of ancient times, much less jealousy between the enlight- 
 ened of different races, than the prevalence of the more modern 
 exclusiveness and arrogance in matters of religion, or of a 
 sectarian and disputatious spirit, would permit. 
 
 The Christian fathers could not resist the fascinations of 
 Plato. Clement of Alexandria, in his gentle catholic way, 
 says, " We do not, if you have no objection, wholly disown 
 Plato" (Exh. VI.). By several of the fathers, Plato is 
 regarded as exhibiting a conception of a trinity in deity. 
 The following are the passages to which attention has been 
 most distinctly drawn on this account : 
 
 " Adjuring the God who is the Governor of all things both 
 that are and that are to come, and the Lord who is the Father 
 of the Governor and cause, whom, if we philosophize truly, we
 
 352 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 shall all know as clearly as is in the power of men under a 
 good genius " (Epist., vl. fin.). 
 
 " From essence indivisible and always the same, and from 
 that which is divisible and comes into being in reference to 
 bodies, he composed, by a union of both, a third and inter- 
 mediate form of essence" (Tim., 35 a). 
 
 " It is not possible for two things alone to cohere, without 
 the intervention of a third, for a certain bond is necessary 
 between the two. And the best of all bonds is that which, 
 as nearly as possible, unites into one both itself and the natures 
 bound with it " (Tim., 3 1 c). 
 
 " Gods of gods, of whom I am the creator (demiurge), and 
 father of works. All things that have come into being through 
 me are indissoluble so long as I will it not. ... As ye have 
 been generated, ye are not immortal nor wholly indissoluble, 
 yet ye shall never be dissolved, nor shall the destiny of death 
 befall you, because my will is your portion " (Tim., 41 a). 
 
 " Around the King of all, all things are, and all things are 
 for his sake ; and the same is the cause of all that is beautiful. 
 But around a second are the second things, and about a third, 
 the third. Now, the soul of man is eager to learn respecting 
 these things, of what kind they are, looking towards things 
 allied to itself, of none of which it possesses enough. Now, 
 respecting the king and those of whom I spoke, there is 
 nothing of this kind. But it is of what is after this that the 
 soul speaks " (Epist, ii. 312 e). 
 
 There is certainly a tendency in these passages, taken 
 together, to a subdivision of deity ; and Plato may very 
 reasonably be regarded as affording a link in the evolution of 
 the trinitarian conception. 
 
 Plato's ideas of deity and of the creation and support of 
 
 the universe are still worthy of attention. We have but to 
 
 drop out the errors in his explanations of physical phenomena, 
 
 into which the state of science in his day allowed him to fall. 
 
 " Working out according to his plan that just as fire to air,
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 353 
 
 so air to water ; as air to water, so water to earth ; he thus 
 linked together and co-established a heaven visible and tangible. 
 Wherefore also from such elements, which are four in number, 
 the body of the world was generated by a postulation of pro- 
 portion ; and derives thence such a sanction, that its parts 
 aptly cohere and are indissoluble, except by him that linked 
 them together. . . . He gave to it also a figure becoming and 
 cognate. To the living being destined to embrace the whole 
 of living beings within itself, the most proper figure that could 
 be is that which comprehends all others within itself the 
 spheroid. . . . By art it is made to afford its own nutriment 
 out of its own decay, as well as to suffer and do all things 
 within itself and by its own operation ... a blessed god he 
 generated. . . . The body of the heaven has been made visible, 
 but unseen is the soul, which partakes of reason and harmony, 
 being made the crown of created things by him who is the 
 crown of intelligent and eternal things " (Tim., 32 b-36 e). 
 
 The universe, then, is " the image of its fashioner, a sense- 
 appreciable god, greatest and best, most lovely and most 
 perfect, this one only-begotten heaven " (Tim., 92 c). 
 
 In the mind of Plato, the Spirit that inspires this lovely 
 universe is Love. Here we turn to a poet Shelley for the 
 rendering of the " winged words " of the great idealist : 
 
 " Nor can I restrain the poetic enthusiasm which takes 
 possession of my discourse, and bids me declare that Love is 
 the divinity who creates peace among men, and calm upon 
 the sea, the windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in 
 sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from each other, 
 and fills our vacant hearts with overflowing sympathy. . . . 
 Before the presence of Love all harsh passions flee and perish ; 
 Love is the author of all soft affections ; the destroyer of all 
 ungentle thoughts ; merciful, mild ; the object of the admira- 
 tion of the wise . . . the father of grace and delicacy, and 
 gentleness, and delight, and persuasion and desire ; the 
 cherisher of all that is good, the abolisher of all evil ; our 
 VOL. I. 2 A
 
 354 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 most excellent pilot, defence, saviour, and guardian, in labour 
 and in fear, in desire and in reason ; the ornament and governor 
 of all things human and divine ; the best, the loveliest ; in 
 whose footsteps every one ought to follow, celebrating him 
 excellently in song, and bearing each his part in that divinest 
 harmony which Love sings to all things which live and are, 
 soothing the troubled minds of gods and men " (Agathon, in 
 the " Symposium," 197 c). 
 
 Concerning the springs and sources of life which are too 
 deep to be discovered by the trembling hazel wand of human 
 science, Plato discourses in another place : 
 
 " The supercelestial region no poet here has worthily 
 hymned, or ever will. . . . For Essence, as it really exists, is 
 colourless and formless and intangible, only to be beheld by 
 the guiding intelligence of the soul ; and around it the family 
 of true science has this abode. As, then, the mind of deity is 
 nourished by intelligence and pure science, so that of every 
 soul, in so far as it is destined to assume its relative condition, 
 seeing after a time that which really is, is well pleased, and 
 contemplating truth is nourished and thrives" (Phaedr., 247 c). 
 
 It might almost be thought that these words of Plato's 
 had been condensed and heightened into the sentence, 
 " Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which 
 entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God pre- 
 pared for them that love him " (i Cor. ii. 9). But these words 
 are mostly a quotation, the original (" From of old men have 
 not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, 
 O God, beside thee, one which worketh for him that waiteth 
 for him," Isai. Ixiv. 4) having been written perhaps about 541 
 B.C., while the date of Plato's work (he lived 429-347 B.C.) is 
 more than a century later. There are evidences of the 
 influence of ancient thought upon Plato, as in the reference 
 lately cited to the mysteries, and as, for example, in the 
 words put in the mouth of Socrates : " This is a certain old- 
 time saying, which we have in mind, that there are souls
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 355 
 
 which pass away and go thither (Hades) from hence, and 
 again pass and come hither, and come into being from 
 among the dead " (Phaedo, xv. 70 c). We may compare with 
 this the doctrine of Pharisaic orthodoxy as evidenced, to take 
 a single instance, in the reference to prenatal sin on the part 
 of a man born blind. 
 
 On the consideration of such a dread subject as the 
 after-death course of the soul, supervenes, perhaps, some 
 pardonable human fear ; philosophy finds a remedy for this : 
 " To dread death is nothing else than to appear to be wise, 
 without being so ; for it is to appear to know what one 
 does not know. For in good sooth no one knows but that 
 death is the greatest of blessings to man ; but men fear 
 it, as if they well knew it to be the greatest of evils. . . . 
 But to do injustice, and to disobey a superior, whether God 
 or man, I know to be evil and base. Before evils, then, which 
 I know to be evils, I shall never fear or shun things which, 
 for aught I know, may be good " (Apol. Socr., xvii. 29 b). 
 
 The following we may regard as the humour of the subject: 
 " ' Both you and Simmias appear to me ... to be childishly 
 afraid, lest when the soul departs from the body, the wind 
 should blow it away and disperse it, especially if one should 
 happen to die not in a calm, but in some sort of violent 
 storm.' Whereupon said Cebes with a smile, ' Endeavour to 
 give us conviction, as if we are afraid, or rather not as if we 
 are afraid, but as if there be perchance in us some kind of a 
 boy that is afraid of such things. Let us then endeavour to 
 persuade him not to be afraid of death as if it were a 
 hobgoblin.' ' But you must sing charms to him every day,' 
 said Socrates, ' until you have charmed him away.' ' Whence, 
 then, O Socrates,' he rejoined, 'shall we get a good charm- 
 singer for such a purpose, seeing that thou art leaving us ? ' 
 ' Greece is wide, O Cebes,' he said, ' and therein are somewhere 
 to be found good men, and there are many, too, of the races 
 of the foreigners, all of which ye ought to search through in
 
 356 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 looking for such a charm-singer, sparing neither money nor 
 toil, for there is nothing on which you could more reasonably 
 spend your money. You ought, too, to seek him amongst one 
 another, for maybe you will not easily find any better able 
 to do this than yourselves ' " (Phaedo, xxiv. 77 d). 
 
 The following is in the same key, though coming from 
 Socrates at a time when he knew he had so soon to die and 
 this for striving to better his fellow-creatures : 
 
 " Crito : ' In what manner are we to bury thee ? ' 
 Socrates : ' Just as ye please, if only ye can catch me, and 
 I do not give you the slip.' And at the same time smiling 
 gently, and looking round on us, he said, ' I cannot persuade 
 Crito, my friends, that I am that Socrates who is now 
 conversing with you, but he thinks that I am he whom he 
 will in but a little while behold dead, and inquires forsooth 
 how he is to bury me. But that which I some while since 
 argued at length, that after the poison-draught is drunken 
 I shall abide with you no more, but shall be gone hence and 
 depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I seem to have 
 told to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to 
 console both you and myself. . . . Ye must be of good cheer, 
 then, and say that ye bury my body, and bury it in such 
 a manner as is pleasing to you, and as ye consider most 
 consonant with our laws ' " (Phaedo, Ixiv. 115 c). 
 
 Such as can enter the spiritual world through the gate of 
 the poet and the prophet, are conscious of an angel's joy. It 
 is earthly motives and retardations, which allow only the gate 
 of the charnel-house to be seen, that make the road seem so 
 drear. 
 
 " It does not appear to me that it is for grief that birds 
 sing, or swans in their last song. But in my opinion it is 
 because they belong to Apollo, and are prophetic, and 
 presage the blessings that are in Hades, that they sing and 
 revel in delight on that day more excellently than in the 
 foregoing time. Now I, too, deem myself to be the fellow-
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 357 
 
 servant of the swans, and votary of the same God, and 
 possessed, at the hands of the master, of prophetic power no 
 whit inferior to theirs, and no more down-hearted than they 
 are at being set free from this life " * (Phaedo, xxxv., 85 b). 
 
 The following strikes a note still more purposeful and 
 assured, manifesting an undisguisable elation, the joy as of 
 one that is going home : " Now I am going unto him that 
 sent me. . . . Now I come to thee ; and these things I speak 
 in the world, that they may have my joy made full in them- 
 selves" (John xvi. 5 ; xvii. 13). 
 
 This is effortless, the joy of consciousness of the life 
 eternal ; the following manifests a victory after a struggle 
 against fear : " I have no longer a fear of death, but already 
 even a desire, and that I too may say something expansive in 
 imitation of the orators ; and for a long time I have been 
 thinking of things on high, and going through the eternal 
 and divine course, for out of my weakness I have collected 
 myself together, and am become a new man " (Axiochus, 
 370 e). The book Axiochus, though bearing Plato's name, is 
 regarded as the work of one of his school. 
 
 The following manifests a very happy and desirable mean 
 between Calvinistic gloom and the opposite pole of thoughtless 
 frivolity: "This is surely a proverb, bruited amongst all, that life 
 is a kind of sojourn in a strange place, and that we reasonably 
 ought to pass through it in a good-tempered way, all but 
 singing glad songs on the road to fate. On the other hand, 
 
 * The following is a modern song upon the same theme of emancipation : 
 " At the last, tenderly, 
 
 From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house, 
 
 From the clasp of the knitted locks from the keep of the 
 
 well-closed doors, 
 Let me be wafted. 
 Let me glide noiselessly forth ; 
 
 With the key of softness unlock the locks with a whisper, 
 Set ope the doors, Q Soul ! 
 Tenderly ! be not impatient ! 
 (Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh ! 
 Strong is your hold, O love) " {Passage to India).
 
 358 THE FA THERS OF JESUS. 
 
 to conduct ourselves in a spiritless manner, and so that it is 
 difficult for us to be torn away, is to exhibit, like a child, 
 a period of life of a kind not overwise " (Axiochus, 365 b). 
 
 Plato, like other great teachers, must have felt keenly the 
 pestilent stupidity of humanity on its lower planes : "To find 
 the Creator and Father of this universe is a task indeed, and 
 having found him it is impossible to describe him to mankind 
 at large " (Tim., 28 c). 
 
 If he required any reminder of the ungrateful reception 
 the highest efforts are likely to meet with, he had but to turn 
 to his unextinguishable memory of the fate of his friend and 
 master, Socrates. 
 
 Speaking of persons unwilling through intemperance to 
 relinquish a bad mode of life, he says : " Is not this pleasant 
 of them, to deem him the most hateful of all men \vho tells 
 the truth, namely, that till one abandon drunkenness and 
 gluttony and sexual excesses and idle neglect, neither drugs, 
 nor caustics, nor surgery, nor charms, nor amulets, nor any 
 other such things as these will be of any avail ? That, was 
 the reply, is not very pleasant, for to be angry with one who 
 speaks us well and fair has no pleasantness in it " (Rep. iv. 
 426 a). 
 
 The following is an instructive thought, the fact advanced 
 being as true in matters physical as no doubt it is in all things 
 else : " It would, perhaps, not be a difficult thing to prove how 
 that the gods are not less careful for small things than for 
 those of surpassing greatness " (Laws, x. 900 c). 
 
 The corresponding moral we may find in the following : 
 " He that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much ; and, 
 he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If, 
 therefore, ye were not faithful in the unjust Mammon, who 
 will commit to your trust the true good ? " (Luke xvi. 10). 
 
 As to what is true gain and true life, Christianity and 
 Platonism are clearly at one. The grain that, instead of 
 being sown in good earth, fell among thorns, represents those
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 359 
 
 that heard of spiritual things, but in whom the pursuit of 
 them is choked by anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, 
 so that no fruit comes to perfection (Luke viii. 14). And 
 the warning runs : " See and keep yourselves from covetous- 
 ness ; for not because one has abundance does his life consist 
 in his possessions" (Luke xii. 15). 
 
 With Plato we find a consciousness of the same fact of the 
 evil of possessiveness : " Through the love of wealth making 
 the whole of time to be without any leisure for the care of 
 anything other than private property, upon which every soul 
 of a citizen is hanging, it can have no care for aught else than 
 daily lucre ; and whatever learning or pursuit leads to this, 
 every one individually is most ready to learn and to practise, 
 but he laughs down all the rest " (Laws, viii. 831 c). 
 
 We borrow from nature portions of its elements only as 
 things to be one day restored. And rightly we ought to have 
 dominated them by our spiritual part as soon as maturity is 
 reached. The great waves of nutrition, and the advance of 
 external sensations, according to Plato, which constitute the 
 bodily life of youth, disturb the resolutions of the soul, which 
 consequently shows no intelligence of its own ; " but when the 
 stream of growth and nutrition invades it to a less degree, 
 then once more the orbits of the soul restored to tranquillity 
 resume their own path, with gradual increase of steadiness 
 . . . . and agreeably with the orbits of nature" (Tim., 44 
 a, b). Neither orbit can be done away ; our work is to 
 harmonize them. Proper food and proper discipline are the 
 necessaries for this combination which we call life. 
 
 But when the career is over, the body is but a " mass of 
 flesh:" " It cannot be right for one to ruin a family by extra- 
 vagance on the score of an opinion that the mass of flesh which 
 is being buried belongs to him, but rather to hold that the son 
 or brother or whomsoever he laments the most and thinks he 
 is burying, has departed, consummating and fulfilling his 
 destiny" (Laws, xii. 959 c).
 
 360 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Plato's conception of righteousness is "that harmonious 
 and proportional development of the inner man, by means of 
 which each faculty of the soul performs its own functions 
 without interfering with the others." He makes the fullest 
 allowances for the state of darkness and imperfection in which 
 the majority of mankind are floundering : 
 
 " When the soul supports itself upon that which truth and 
 real being irradiate, it understands and knows it, and appears 
 to be possessed of intelligence ; but when on the other hand 
 it leans upon that which is blended with darkness, which is 
 born and dies, it then has to do with mere opinion, and be- 
 comes dim-sighted, changing about in ups and downs of 
 opinion, and seems to be unpossessed of intelligence " (Rep., 
 vi. 508 d). 
 
 A reflection of Jesus is that " the sons of this world are 
 wiser with respect to their own generation than the sons of 
 the light " with respect to theirs. And he advocates as busy 
 an ardour in making friends outside the unrighteous Mammon, 
 as its subjects manifest in its selfish service. Plato notices 
 this staunchness in the pursuit of worldly interests, and con- 
 verts the fact into a hope that the principle will remain when 
 the pursuit is changed for the higher and more difficult one : 
 
 " Have you never yet noticed, in the case of those accounted 
 wicked but wise, how keen is the sight of the little soul (psy- 
 charion, soullet), and how acutely it perceives those things 
 upon which it is turned, showing that it has no dulness in the 
 power of vision, but is compelled to be so far the servant of 
 vice, that the more acutely it perceives, so much the more evil 
 it perpetrates. 
 
 " As regards this part of such a nature, if from childhood 
 upwards it should be docked and stripped of the affinities of 
 its birth as if they were plummets cut away from it affinities 
 which by means of feastings and pleasures and lickerish things 
 of this kind become second nature, and turn the vision of the 
 soul to the things that are below ; if from these the soul can
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 361 
 
 free itself and turn itself toward truth, the very same principle 
 in the same individuals would not less acutely see truth than 
 it saw those things upon which it was but lately turned " 
 (Rep., vii. 5 19 a). 
 
 Holding a belief in a progress which may extend over 
 an indefinite period, Plato finds support to that belief in 
 the differences that exist between men in the present world : 
 " In the greatest dangers, when men are in peril, in wars, 
 or diseases, or storms at sea, they behave towards those who 
 have power in each several case as towards gods, looking up 
 to them as their saviours, though these surpass them in 
 nothing whatever but knowledge" (Theaetetus, 180 b). 
 
 With the belief in eternal progress must be held another 
 without which that belief would be void : "If the soul is 
 immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, 
 which we call life, but for all time" (Phaedo, Ivii. 107 c). 
 
 The metaphor of a race fits well the earthly career viewed 
 in its immediate results : " Do not men who are both cunning 
 and unrighteous act as those in the race who run well at the 
 beginning but not at the end, for at the first they briskly leap 
 forward, but end by becoming ridiculous . . . and run off 
 without the crown. But such as are true runners reach the 
 goal and receive the prizes and the crown" (Rep., x. 613 b). 
 With this we may compare the following variation on the 
 metaphor : " Ye were running well ; who hindered you from 
 obeying the truth ? " (Gal. v. 7). 
 
 The spiritual sense of light and darkness, expressed by 
 symbolic use of the terms, is to be found alike in Plato and 
 the Gospels : " There are two disturbances of vision arising 
 from two causes when we turn from darkness to the light, 
 and from the light to darkness. And when one considers that 
 this is so too with regard to the soul, he will not give way to 
 silly laughter, when he sees it disturbed and unable to make 
 sure of its perception, but will rather give his attention to the 
 question whether it is in coming from a brighter existence
 
 362 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 that it has been darkened by unaccustomedness, or whether it 
 is on emerging from gross ignorance into a brighter state, that 
 it is overpowered by more dazzling splendour" (Rep., vii. 5i8a). 
 
 In Plato's story of the cave are to be found his most 
 suggestive pictures of light and darkness, viewed in reference 
 to the clear vision, or shadowed imperfect straining, of our 
 spiritual eyesight : 
 
 " ' Compare our nature, as regards instruction and the 
 want of it, with such a condition as follows : Picture men, as 
 it were, in an underground cave-like dwelling, having an 
 entrance open to the light, the width of the whole cave. 
 Within it imagine persons, who from childhood upwards 
 have had their legs and necks in fetters, so that they do not 
 stir, and only look at what is right in front, unable to turn 
 their heads by reason of the bonds, their light proceeding 
 from a fire burning above, and far off, behind them. And 
 between the fire and the fettered folk is an elevated roadway, 
 along which may be seen a low wall built, like conjurers' 
 screens are put up in front of the people, above which they 
 exhibit their marvels. . . . By the side of this low wall, picture 
 to yourself men carrying all sorts of articles which overtop the 
 wall, statues of men, and images of other animals in stone and 
 wood, and all kinds of materials, and, as probably would be 
 the case, some of the bearers talking, others silent.' 
 
 " ' You are describing an out-of-the-way comparison, and 
 out-of-the-way fettered folk.' 
 
 " ' Such as resemble ourselves ; ... for think you that such 
 persons as these would have seen anything more of themselves 
 or of one another than the shadows which are thrown by the 
 fire upon the part of the cave that is right opposite them ? ' 
 
 " ' Why, how can they ... if they were compelled through 
 life to keep their heads immovable ? ' 
 
 " ' But what of the articles that were being borne along ? 
 would not this be the same ? . . . Now, if they were able to 
 hold conversation with one another, do you not suppose that
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 363 
 
 they would think fit to give names to what they saw before 
 them, as if present ? . . . And if the prison had an echo from 
 the opposite part, as often as one of the passers-by spoke, do 
 you suppose that they would regard the voice as anything 
 else than the shadow that was passing by ? . . . Undoubtedly, 
 then, such people would regard truth as the shadows of manu- 
 factured articles. . . . Consider, then, their release from their 
 fetters and the cure from their folly, what it would be like, 
 if it was by nature that such things were befalling them. 
 Whenever one was set loose and compelled suddenly to rise 
 and to turn his neck round and walk and look up to the light, 
 would he not feel pain in all these acts, and on account of the 
 dazzle be unable to discern those very things, the shadows 
 of which he saw before ? What do you suppose he would 
 say if any one told him that what he saw before were fooleries, 
 while now he was seeing something much nearer to the reality, 
 and was turned towards much more genuine things ? And 
 then if any one were to point out to him the passing things, 
 one by one, and question him, and oblige him to answer what 
 it was ; do you not think that he would be at fault, and 
 would suppose that the things as seen before were more true 
 than as now pointed out ? . . . Therefore, even if some one 
 were to force him to look at the light itself, would he not feel 
 pain in the eyes and shun it, turning aside to those things 
 which he could really discern, and reckon them as clearer in 
 reality than those that were pointed out ? . . . And if ... any 
 person should drag him thence by force by the rugged and 
 steep ascent, and not stay until he had dragged him to the 
 light of the sun, would he not be in distress and angry at 
 being dragged ? and, when he came to the light, would he 
 not, through having his eyes full of splendour, be unable to 
 see a single thing of those that are now accounted to be 
 the true ones? . . . He would require, then, some practice 
 if he were about to look at the things above, and first 
 he would discern shadows most easily, and after that
 
 364 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 the images of men and of other things in water, and the 
 things themselves afterwards. For the same reason he 
 would behold the things that are in the sky, and the sky 
 itself, by night, gazing on the light of the stars and moon, 
 more easily than by day the sun and daylight. . . . Last of 
 all, then, he would be able to perceive the sun, not in water, 
 nor by its images in any out-of-the-way place, but itself by 
 itself in its own station, and to contemplate its nature. . . . 
 And after this he might now reason concerning it, that it is 
 this that brings the seasons and the years, and is the steward 
 of all things in the visible sphere, and in one sense the author 
 of all that they saw. ... If the man calls to recollection his 
 first habitation and the wisdom that was there, and his com- 
 panions in captivity, would he not congratulate himself on the 
 change, and pity the others ? . . . And if they had amongst 
 themselves honours and praises and rewards for him that had 
 the acutest vision of what passed by, and the best memory as 
 to which of these things were wont to go before and after and 
 together, and from such observations was best able to presage 
 the future ; do you think that he would be desirous of such 
 marks of pre-eminence, or envy those honoured by them and 
 possessing influence, or would not rather experience what 
 Homer describes, and ardently desire 
 
 " As a day labourer for some needy man, 
 To do another's work for wage, 
 
 and rather endure anything than hold those opinions and live 
 in that manner ? . . . And . . . were such a man once again 
 to descend to the same sitting-place, and be seated there, 
 would not he have his eyes full of darkness in consequence of 
 coming suddenly from the sun ? ... As for those shadows, 
 again, if he were constrained to form judgments and enter into 
 contentions about them with those who had always remained 
 in fetters, from the time when he was short-sighted, before 
 his eyes were set right (and this period of habituation would 
 be by no means a short one), would not he afford food for
 
 A KAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 365 
 
 ridicule ? and would it not be told concerning him, how, since 
 he had gone up, he had returned with his eyesight destroyed, 
 and that it was not meet that he should even attempt to go 
 up, and as for the one that took it in hand to loose him and 
 take him up, they ought to put him to death if they could 
 get him into their hands? '" (Rep., vii. 514 a~5i7 a). 
 
 This famous parable deserves some study, as conveying 
 the bitter truth how slavish natures that " sit in darkness and 
 the shadow of death " clamour against those whom the truth 
 and the light have made free. 
 
 It has been adduced also in illustration of the idea of 
 beings living in the perception of two dimensions only, 
 endeavouring to judge of more advanced existences who like 
 ourselves live and move and have our being in three dimen- 
 sions ; and has suggested the obvious question, How far could 
 we three-dimensional folk make shift at judging of and dis- 
 cussing beings existing in a state one power higher ? 
 
 This question leads us into the mystic region at once, and 
 we conclude, with some humility, that we see only according 
 to our state. This truth is reiterated among the Christian 
 records. " The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness 
 apprehends it not " (John i. 5). " This is the judgment, that 
 the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness 
 rather than the light" (John iii. 19). Jesus is the man who 
 came out of the world where the sun was seen in direct vision : 
 " I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not 
 walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life " (John 
 viii. 12). " I am come a light into the world, that whosoever 
 believeth on me may not abide in the darkness " (John xii. 47). 
 And the world turned to its conventional view of the wor- 
 shipful shadows on the wall, and got into its cruel hands the 
 man who taught the mischievous doctrines of the upper 
 world. " For now we see in a mirror, darkly [in a riddle, 
 the shadow-pictures of the cave]; but then face -to face" 
 in the light (l Cor. xiii. 12).
 
 366 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 " Mortal nature, . . . irrationally avoiding pain and 
 pursuing pleasure, will set both these before what is more 
 righteous and more excellent, and by producing a darkness 
 in itself eventually fill both itself and the whole city with 
 every ill. Wherefore, should any man, strong by nature, born 
 with a divine destiny, be competent to comprehend this, he 
 would require no laws for the government of himself. There 
 is no law or order superior to knowledge, . . . but it exists 
 nowhere except to a small extent ; therefore we have to choose 
 the second in rank, namely, order and law" (Laws, ix. 875 b). 
 
 " If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great the 
 darkness (that is in thee) ! " (Matt. vi. 23). 
 
 " Among intelligibles, the last and the difficult one to be 
 seen, is the idea of The Good. When beheld, it has to be 
 inferred from reason to be the cause of all that is right and 
 beautiful, giving birth in the visible to light and the lord 
 thereof, and in the region of perceptions being itself the 
 sovereign providing truth and intelligence" (Rep., vii. 517 c). 
 
 " Where there is no light in the ways of one with another, 
 but a darkness, there no one ever rightly meets with the 
 honour that is his meed, nor . . . even with the justice that 
 is seemly " (Laws, v. 738 e). 
 
 " He that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his 
 works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought 
 in God" (John iii. 21). 
 
 " So let your light shine before men, that they may see 
 your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven " 
 (Matt. v. 1 6). 
 
 The following afford an interesting parallelism : 
 
 " Life is the outcome of fire and spirit [breath] " (Tim. 
 77 a). 
 
 " He will baptize you in holy spirit [a holy breath, or 
 wind] and in fire" (Matt. iii. 11). 
 
 " The mouth ... as Plato says, is the entrance of mortal 
 things, and the way of exit of things immortal. For into it
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 367 
 
 there enter food and drink, corruptible foods of a corruptible 
 body. But out of it proceed expressions of thought, im- 
 mortal laws of an immortal soul, by means whereof the 
 rational life is regulated " (Philo de Mund. Opif. xl.). 
 
 " Not that which enters into the mouth defiles the man, 
 but that which goes out of the mouth, this it is that defiles the 
 man. . . . Everything that enters the mouth goes away into 
 the belly and is cast out into a sewer. But the things that 
 proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and it is 
 they that defile the man. For out of the heart come forth 
 evil designs, murders, adulteries, harlotries, thefts, false witness, 
 blasphemies" (Matt. xv. II, 17-19). 
 
 Plato has no doubt which is the responsible part of us : 
 " Which answer is more correct, that we see with or by our 
 eyes, and hear with or by our ears ? By which we receive 
 each sensible impression, it seems to me, rather than with 
 which. For surely it would be strange if many senses resided 
 in us ... and they did not all tend to one certain archetypal 
 principle (idea), whether it be soul, or whatever it be right to 
 call it, with which, by these as instruments, we are sensible of 
 all objects of sense " (Theaetetus, 184 c). 
 
 The following discloses a view of what, Platonically speak- 
 ing, is the daimonic plane of being : 
 
 " See that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for 
 I say unto you, that their angels in heaven do always see 
 the face of my Father which is in heaven " (Matt, xviii. 10). 
 That is to say, there is a part that is of them and not yet of 
 them, the unseen part which, unconsciously to the physical 
 faculties, touches on the angelic spheres, and therein finds its 
 sympathy and guidance. The following is Plato's conception 
 of our spiritual link and strengthener : 
 
 " With respect to the most authoritative element of the 
 soul that dwells with us, we should conceive as follows : that 
 God has assigned it to each of us as a daimon ; that part, 
 namely, which we affirm, and most correctly, resides at the
 
 368 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 body's loftiest border, and raises us from earth unto our kin- 
 ship in heaven ; being, as we are, a plant not of earth but of 
 heaven ; and proceeding from that quarter from which the 
 primal genesis of the soul had its being, the divine nature, 
 raising aloft our head and root, gives uprightness to the whole 
 corporeal frame " (Tim. 90 a). 
 
 Plato's vivid consciousness of the substantial existence 
 of " that which truth and real being irradiate," if trans- 
 ferred to the religious plane, would become what is called 
 faith : " Precisely as essence is to genesis, so is truth to faith " 
 (Tim: 29 c). 
 
 As creation to the essential quality that rules it, so is 
 human conjecture to absolute truth ! Did Plato's suggestive 
 saying never come before the eyes of the writer of the words ? 
 " Faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the induc- 
 tion of things not seen " (Heb. xi. i). 
 
 The following is a test of sincerity and unworldliness, which, 
 allowing for the difference of style, might have been found in 
 the Gospels : " The righteous man, according to JEschylos, is 
 simple and high-minded, not wishful to seem to be good, but 
 to be so. ... He must take away the seeming, for if he seem 
 to be righteous, he will have gifts and honours as seeming to 
 be of such a sort ; and so it will be uncertain whether he be 
 righteous for righteousness' sake, or for the gifts and honours. 
 He should be stripped of all but righteousness " (Rep., ii. 
 361 b). 
 
 The doctrine here expressed takes us very near to the 
 moral of the fable of the Pharisee and the Publican, and also 
 to the injunction not to do works of compassion or righteous- 
 ness so as to be seen of men. 
 
 But the passage goes further, and contains a singular kind 
 of prophecy, the application of which will be obvious. The 
 position in the world of the truly righteous man is thus por- 
 trayed : " Without doing any unjust thing, let him have the 
 utmost reputation of injustice, in order that he may be put to
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 369 
 
 the test for righteousness, so as not to be moved by reviling 
 and its consequences, but rather be unchangeable till death, 
 seeming indeed to be unjust through life while really righteous. 
 . . . The just man, thus situated, will be scourged, tortured, 
 bound, will have his eyes put out, and lastly, will suffer all 
 manner of evils, and be crucified." 
 
 Another passage illustrates further the despite which an 
 unworldly unselfish man is likely to meet with at the hands 
 of his fellows : 
 
 " How can this be wise, Socrates, that any art should deteri- 
 orate a man of native ability whom it has seized upon, ren- 
 dering him unable to help himself, or to preserve himself or 
 any one else from the greatest dangers, and suffering him to be 
 plundered of all his substance by enemies, and to live in the 
 state utterly without honour ? Such a man, to speak rudely, 
 one may buffet on the cheek with impunity. . . . Employ 
 yourself in what will give you a reputation for wisdom, leave 
 to others these clevernesses, whether they ought to be called 
 nonsense or fooleries, by which you will come to dwell in an 
 empty house ; and emulate, not men who confute these trifles, 
 but those who have everyday life, glory, and many other good 
 things " (Gorg., xli. 486 b). 
 
 This passage is curiously completed by the one that 
 follows. The tone here is pre-eminently Christian, even as 
 compared with some so-called Christian writings, almost plus 
 royaliste que le rot. 
 
 "I for my part am persuaded . . . and consider how I 
 may manifest as wholesome a soul as possible to the judge. 
 Wherefore, disregarding the honours of the majority, and 
 looking to the truth, I shall endeavour in real earnest to live 
 and die as virtuously as I can. And I exhort all other men, 
 to the utmost of my power, and you too in turn I urge, to 
 this life and this contest, which I affirm surpasses all contests 
 here ; and I upbraid you because you will not be able to assist 
 yourself when your sentence comes, and the judgment of 
 VOL. I. 2 B
 
 370 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 which I have already told you. . . . But when the judge shall 
 lay hold of you and bring you before his tribunal, you will 
 there gape and become dizzy, no less than I should here, and 
 perhaps some one will strike you ignominiously on the cheek, 
 and treat you with all manner of contumely " (Gorg., Ixxxii. 
 526 d). 
 
 At the spiritual altitude a man can arrive only by taking 
 and holding to a very broad view of life : " What is there that 
 can be great in a little time ? for all the period from infancy to 
 old age is but little in respect of the whole. . . . Do you think 
 an immortal being ought to be much concerned about such a 
 period, and not about the whole of time ? . . . Have you not 
 realized that your soul is immortal, and never perishes ? " 
 (Rep., x. 608 b). 
 
 Jesus said openly, " My kingdom is not of this world," and 
 was in distinct opposition to the worldly spirit, which had 
 nothing in him. Plato is more tolerant, perhaps, as being on 
 a plane nearer the human level, and not so near the angelic ; 
 but he ends in discovering that the way of the world, even in 
 politics, is not a way in which he could walk, without too 
 serious a deflection from his ideal : 
 
 " At first I was full of ardour towards engaging in affairs 
 of the commonwealth, but when I looked into these and saw 
 that they swayed about in every way from side to side, I ended 
 in becoming giddy, yet not so as to withdraw from consider- 
 ing how at any time something better might come to pass 
 in respect of these very matters, and above all, as regards the 
 whole form of government, but to be ever awaiting oppor- 
 tunities of action. At last I perceived that all existing states 
 are badly governed. ... I was therefore compelled to say, in 
 praise of true philosophy, that through it we are enabled to 
 discern all that is righteous in regard to matters of state and 
 of individuals ; and hence that the human race will never 
 cease from ills until the race of those who are right and true 
 wisdom-seekers shall come into political power, or until
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 371 
 
 persons who have power in states shall by some divine fate 
 seek wisdom in very truth " (Ep., vii. 325 e). 
 
 When Plato turns his mind to political or social topics, he 
 as it were drafts a bill for the regulation of human affairs, and 
 a bill that never became law. Nevertheless his work remains, 
 " providing," as Professor Jowett phrases it, " the instruments 
 of thought for future generations." 
 
 There is a hypothesis in the passage that follows that still 
 remains as it was in Plato's day, mooted now and again by 
 philosophic minds : 
 
 " ' Tell me this, Glaucon ; for in your house I see both 
 sporting dogs and a number of fine birds have you, I beg, 
 ever applied yourself to their pairing, and bringing forth 
 
 young 
 
 " ' To what end.? ' said he. 
 
 " ' First of all, among these, though all are fine, are not 
 some of them both actually and potentially the best ? ' 
 
 " ' They are.' 
 
 " ' Do you breed, then, from all alike ; or are you studious 
 to do so, as far as possible, from the best breed ? ' 
 
 " ' From the best.' 
 
 " ' But how ; from the youngest, or the oldest, or those 
 fully in their prime ? ' 
 
 " ' From those in their prime.' 
 
 " ' And if they are not thus bred, you consider that the 
 breed both of birds and dogs greatly degenerates ? ' 
 
 " ' I do,' replied he. 
 
 " ' And as to horses,' said I, ' and other animals, do you 
 think their case otherwise ? ' 
 
 " ' It would be paradoxical to suppose so.' 
 
 " ' Bless me, my dear fellow,' said I, ' how urgently we 
 require to have tiptop governors, that is to say, if the same 
 applies to the human race ! ' " (Rep., v. 459 a). 
 
 A shrewd American, one of some experience in consci- 
 entious efforts in this direction, has suggested that perhaps it
 
 372 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 was for this^bold stroke of criticism that Socrates was con- 
 demned to death. However that may be, and though we 
 have devoted more attention to the scientific breeding of 
 animals than ever ancient Greece could have done, society 
 has not yet progressed so far as to produce the prize baby, 
 or the all-round man. Indeed, some of the human tabernacles 
 which we offer the unborn are so poor and rickety that it is 
 a marvel tenants are ever found for them. A very large 
 proportion do indeed surrender their lease at a very early 
 date. 
 
 Nor, amid more than ample political clamour and pro- 
 fession, have we yet assimilated the truth that the State is 
 based upon the individual, and that ill-bred, ill-fed, ill-trained 
 children provide a continual supply of costly tenants of 
 hospitals, almshouses, poor-houses, and prisons, and constitute 
 a permanent weakness to our race. 
 
 How happy are young animals other than human ! In 
 a single English town of middle size * it was found that the 
 chemists sold, every week, 70 worth of " Godfrey's cordial," 
 "quietness," "child's preserver," "syrup of poppies," and 
 laudanum. 
 
 Plato did not foresee this development of his theory, that 
 instead of fostering the production of fine children, future 
 lawgivers might in their wisdom license the slow poisoning of 
 puling and unsatisfactory specimens of humanity. 
 
 The one quality that distinguishes the sane thinker or 
 seer from the overheated enthusiast, is his patience : he 
 accepts the necessity of growth. There is a very beautiful 
 parabolic metaphor in the following passage, which will show 
 us that Plato was not a merely fanciful dreamer, the sport of 
 momentary impulse, or the votary of a sentimental asceticism 
 urging a luxurious withdrawal from life : 
 
 " We ought to endeavour to fly hence thither [from mortal 
 nature to divine] as quickly as possible. But this flight con- 
 
 * Preston.
 
 A RAY FROM THE SPHERE OF PLATO. 373 
 
 sists in resembling God to the utmost of our power ; and this 
 resemblance consists in becoming righteous and holy with 
 wisdom. . . . God is never in any respect unjust, but the 
 most righteous that can be, and there is not anything more 
 like unto him than the man amongst us who is as righteous 
 as possible" (Theaetetus, 177 a, c). 
 
 We may be reminded of the words, " This is life eternal, 
 to know thee the only true God," " Be ye perfect, as your 
 heavenly Father is perfect." 
 
 The peculiar symbolic form of the thought, "The flight 
 from mortal nature to divine consists in resembling God to 
 our utmost," may remind us of an exquisite way of defining 
 judgment, as applied to men who shut their eyes in sensual 
 sleep ; " this is the judgment \i.e. the judgment consists in 
 the fact], that the light has come into the world." 
 
 In a wider sense than can be fully shown by a com- 
 parison of isolated passages, is the spirit of Plato at one with 
 the original spirit of Christianity. With both, human life, 
 while of primary importance to those tabernacling therein, is 
 not life itself, or life of eternal quality, but a secondary, deri- 
 vative, or removed phase of existence, proceeding from the 
 first, and drawing therefrom, or lacking, its normal rule and 
 governance. 
 
 But, to judge of Plato by isolated passages is not so great 
 an injustice as it might be in the case of some philosophers : 
 " Platonism is so organic throughout, that it may be developed 
 from every genuine germ of it." There is spirit in Plato's 
 work, not intellect only ; and spirit has a glow discernible in 
 the smallest fragment. 
 
 " Plato did not propose by his philosophy a mere theoretic 
 perception of abstract truth, but to penetrate and elevate life 
 was its highest aim and endeavour. And so he illustrates the 
 saying of Pascal, that in Divine things one must love in order 
 to know." In this there is a sympathy between his influence 
 and the more personal and vivid appeal of Jesus, a sympathy
 
 374 THE FATHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 that will be difficult to perceive only in proportion as " the 
 old habit of thinking immediately, or even exclusively, of 
 something doctrinal, when the Christian element or Christi- 
 anity is spoken of," still adheres to us. " If any one chooses 
 to put the will of God into practice, he will know concerning 
 the doctrine." 
 
 It is manifest that we cannot be taught the whole secret 
 of fate and freewill, of our place and condition here, and the 
 reasons why we are in a material world. All truths, there- 
 fore, which may be attempted to be conveyed to us must be 
 partial truths. Suggestive facts unnoticed by us busy sleepers, 
 a great and inspired teacher is now and again enabled to 
 convey ; and from these and their solid sanctions in the lessons 
 of life, we are left to deduce such conclusions as best fit the 
 bigness of our appreciative faculty. We can receive no more 
 than we can grasp from either Platonism or Christianity, and 
 a blow from the resistless hand upon our factitious and tem- 
 porary life is perhaps sometimes the necessary preliminary 
 to the opening of our ears and hearts to the whisper of any 
 gospel ; even one that tells of a happy kingdom which waits 
 only to be won. 
 
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