Five Stages of Greek Religion Part 11

The Ptolemies and Seleucidae had at any moment at their disposal powers very much greater than any Pericles or Nicias or Lysander.[155:1] The folk of the small cities of the Aegean hinterlands must have felt towards these great strangers almost as poor Indian peasants in time of flood and famine feel towards an English official. There were men now on earth who could do the things that had hitherto been beyond the power of man. Were several cities thrown down by earthquake; here was one who by his nod could build them again. Famines had always occurred and been mostly incurable. Here was one who could without effort allay a famine.

Provinces were harried and wasted by habitual wars: the eventual conqueror had destroyed whole provinces in making the wars; now, as he had destroyed, he could also save. 'What do you mean by a G.o.d,' the simple man might say, 'if these men are not G.o.ds? The only difference is that these G.o.ds are visible, and the old G.o.ds no man has seen.'

The t.i.tles a.s.sumed by all the divine kings tell the story clearly.

Antiochus Epiphanes--'the G.o.d made manifest'; Ptolemaios Euergetes, Ptolemaios Soter. Occasionally we have a Keraunos or a Nikator, a 'Thunderbolt' or a 'G.o.d of Mana', but mostly it is Soter, Euergetes and Epiphanes, the Saviour, the Benefactor, the G.o.d made manifest, in constant alternation. In the honorific inscriptions and in the writings of the learned, philanthropy (f??a????p?a) is by far the most prominent characteristic of the G.o.d upon earth. Was it that people really felt that to save or benefit mankind was a more G.o.dlike thing than to blast and destroy them? Philosophers have generally said that, and the vulgar pretended to believe them. It was at least politic, when ministering to the half-insane pride of one of these princes, to remind him of his mercy rather than of his wrath.

Wendland in his brilliant book, _h.e.l.lenistisch-romische Kultur_, calls attention to an inscription of the year 196 B. C. in honour of the young Ptolemaios Epiphanes, who was made manifest at the age of twelve years.[156:1] It is a typical doc.u.ment of Graeco-Egyptian king-wors.h.i.+p:

'In the reign of the young king by inheritance from his Father, Lord of the Diadems, great in glory, pacificator of Egypt and pious towards the G.o.ds, superior over his adversaries, Restorer of the life of man, Lord of the Periods of Thirty Years, like Hephaistos the Great, King like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands; offspring of the G.o.ds of the Love of the Father, whom Hephaistos has approved, to whom the Sun has given Victory; living image of Zeus; Son of the Sun, Ptolemaios the ever-living, beloved by Phtha; in the ninth year of Aetos son of Aetos, Priest of Alexander and the G.o.ds Saviours and the G.o.ds Brethren and the G.o.ds Benefactors and the G.o.ds of the Love of the Father and the G.o.d Manifest for whom thanks be given:'

The Priests who came to his coronation ceremony at Memphis proclaim:

'Seeing that King Ptolemaios ever-living, beloved of Phtha, G.o.d Manifest for whom Thanks be given, born of King Ptolemaios and Queen Arsinoe, the G.o.ds of the Love of the Father, has done many benefactions to the Temples and those in them and all those beneath his rule, being from the beginning G.o.d born of G.o.d and G.o.ddess, like Horus son of Isis and Osiris, who came to the help of his father Osiris (and?) in his benevolent disposition towards the G.o.ds has consecrated to the temples revenues of silver and of corn, and has undergone many expenses in order to lead Egypt into the sunlight and give peace to the Temples, and has with all his powers shown love of mankind.'

When the people of Lycopolis revolted, we hear:

'in a short time he took the city by storm and slew all the Impious who dwelt in it, even as Hermes and Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, conquered those who of old revolted in the same regions . . . in return for which the G.o.ds have granted him Health Victory Power and all other good things, the Kingdom remaining to him and his sons for time everlasting.'[157:1]

The conclusion which the Priests draw from these facts is that the young king's t.i.tles and honours are insufficient and should be increased. It is a typical and terribly un-h.e.l.lenic doc.u.ment of the h.e.l.lenistic G.o.d-man in his appearance as King.

Now the early successors of Alexander mostly professed themselves members of the Stoic school, and in the mouth of a Stoic this doctrine of the potential divinity of man was an inspiring one. To them virtue was the really divine thing in man; and the most divine kind of virtue was that of helping humanity. To love and help humanity is, according to Stoic doctrine, the work and the very essence of G.o.d. If you take away p.r.o.noia from G.o.d, says Chrysippus,[158:1] it is like taking away light and heat from fire. This doctrine is magnificently expressed by Pliny in a phrase that is probably translated from Posidonius: 'G.o.d is the helping of man by man; and that is the way to eternal glory.'[158:2]

The conception took root in the minds of many Romans. A great Roman governor often had the chance of thus helping humanity on a vast scale, and liked to think that such a life opened the way to heaven. 'One should conceive', says Cicero (_Tusc._ i. 32), 'the G.o.ds as like men who feel themselves born for the work of helping, defending, and saving humanity. Hercules has pa.s.sed into the number of the G.o.ds. He would never have so pa.s.sed if he had not built up that road for himself while he was among mankind.'

I have been using some rather late authors, though the ideas seem largely to come from Posidonius.[159:1] But before Posidonius the sort of fact on which we have been dwelling had had its influence on religious speculation. When Alexander made his conquering journey to India and afterwards was created a G.o.d, it was impossible not to reflect that almost exactly the same story was related in myth about Dionysus.

Dionysus had started from India and travelled in the other direction: that was the only difference. A flood of light seemed to be thrown on all the traditional mythology, which, of course, had always been a puzzle to thoughtful men. It was impossible to believe it as it stood, and yet hard--in an age which had not the conception of any science of mythology--to think it was all a ma.s.s of falsehood, and the great Homer and Hesiod no better than liars. But the generation which witnessed the official deification of the various Seleucidae and Ptolemies seemed suddenly to see light. The traditional G.o.ds, from Heracles and Dionysus up to Zeus and Cronos and even Ouranos, were simply old-world rulers and benefactors of mankind, who had, by their own insistence or the grat.i.tude of their subjects, been transferred to the ranks of heaven.

For that is the exact meaning of making them divine: they are cla.s.sed among the true immortals, the Sun and Moon and Stars and Corn and Wine, and the everlasting elements.

The philosophic romance of Euhemerus, published early in the third century B. C., had instantaneous success and enormous influence.[160:1]

It was one of the first Greek books translated into Latin, and became long afterwards a favourite weapon of the Christian fathers in their polemics against polytheism. 'Euhemerism' was, on the face of it, a very brilliant theory; and it had, as we have noticed, a special appeal for the Romans.

Yet, if such a conception might please the leisure of a statesman, it could hardly satisfy the serious thought of a philosopher or a religious man. If man's soul really holds a fragment of G.o.d and is itself a divine being, its G.o.dhead cannot depend on the possession of great riches and armies and organized subordinates. If 'the helping of man by man is G.o.d', the help in question cannot be material help. The religion which ends in deifying only kings and millionaires may be vulgarly popular but is self-condemned.

As a matter of fact the whole tendency of Greek philosophy after Plato, with some ill.u.s.trious exceptions, especially among the Romanizing Stoics, was away from the outer world towards the world of the soul. We find in the religious writings of this period that the real Saviour of men is not he who protects them against earthquake and famine, but he who in some sense saves their souls. He reveals to them the _Gnosis Theou_, the Knowledge of G.o.d. The 'knowledge' in question is not a mere intellectual knowledge. It is a complete union, a merging of beings.

And, as we have always to keep reminding our cold modern intelligence, he who has 'known' G.o.d is himself thereby deified. He is the Image of G.o.d, the Son of G.o.d, in a sense he _is_ G.o.d.[161:1] The stratum of ideas described in the first of the studies will explain the ease with which transition took place. The wors.h.i.+pper of Bacchos became Bacchos simply enough, because in reality the G.o.d Bacchos was originally only the projection of the human Bacchoi. And in the h.e.l.lenistic age the notion of these secondary mediating G.o.ds was made easier by the a.n.a.logy of the human interpreters. Of course, we have abundant instances of actual preachers and miracle-workers who on their own authority posed, and were accepted, as G.o.ds. The adventure of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra[161:2]

shows how easily such things could happen. But as a rule, I suspect, the most zealous priest or preacher preferred to have his G.o.d in the background. He preaches, he heals the sick and casts out devils, not in his own name but in the name of One who sent him. This actual present priest who initiates you or me is himself already an Image of G.o.d; but above him there are greater and wiser priests, above them others, and above all there is the one eternal Divine Mediator, who being in perfection both man and G.o.d can alone fully reveal G.o.d to man, and lead man's soul up the heavenly path, beyond Change and Fate and the Houses of the Seven Rulers, to its ultimate peace. I have seen somewhere a Gnostic or early Christian emblem which indicates this doctrine. Some Shepherd or Saviour stands, his feet on the earth, his head towering above the planets, lifting his follower in his outstretched arms.

The Gnostics are still commonly thought of as a body of Christian heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the h.e.l.lenistic world before Christianity as well as after. They must have been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Their Saviour, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in men's minds before the Saviour of the Christians. 'If we look close', says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great clearness, that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was already present there under various forms.'[162:1] He occurs notably in two pre-Christian doc.u.ments, discovered by the keen a.n.a.lysis and profound learning of Dr. Reitzenstein: the Poimandres revelation printed in the _Corpus Hermetic.u.m_, and the sermon of the Naa.s.senes in Hippolytus, _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, which is combined with Attis-wors.h.i.+p.[162:2] The violent anti-Jewish bias of most of the sects--they speak of 'the accursed G.o.d of the Jews' and identify him with Saturn and the Devil--points on the whole to pre-Christian conditions: and a completely non-Christian standpoint is still visible in the Mandaean and Manichean systems.

Their Redeemer is descended by a fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos Soter' of early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name of Jesus or 'Christos', 'the Anointed', tends gradually to supersede. Above all he is, in some sense, Man, or 'the Second Man'

or 'the Son of Man'. The origin of this phrase needs a word of explanation. Since the ultimate unseen G.o.d, spirit though He is, made man in His image, since holy men (and divine kings) are images of G.o.d, it follows that He is Himself Man. He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men are feeble copies. He is also the Father; the Saviour is his Son, 'the Image of the Father', 'the Second Man', 'the Son of Man'. The method in which he performs his mystery of Redemption varies. It is haunted by the memory of the old Suffering and Dying G.o.d, of whom we spoke in the first of these studies.

It is vividly affected by the ideal 'Righteous Man' of Plato, who 'shall be scourged, tortured, bound, his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering every evil, shall be impaled or crucified'.[163:1] But in the main he descends, of his free will or by the eternal purpose of the Father, from Heaven through the spheres of all the Archontes or Kosmokratores, the planets, to save mankind, or sometimes to save the fallen Virgin, the Soul, Wisdom, or 'the Pearl'.[164:1] The Archontes let him pa.s.s because he is disguised; they do not know him (cf. 1 Cor.

ii. 7 ff.). When his work is done he ascends to Heaven to sit by the side of the Father in glory; he conquers the Archontes, leads them captive in his triumph, strips them of their armour (Col. ii. 15; cf.

the previous verse), sometimes even crucifies them for ever in their places in the sky.[164:2] The epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians are much influenced by these doctrines. Paul himself constantly uses the language of them, but in the main we find him discouraging the excesses of superst.i.tion, reforming, ignoring, rejecting. His Jewish blood was perhaps enough to keep him to strict monotheism. Though he admits Angels and Archontes, Princ.i.p.alities and Powers, he scorns the Elements and he seems deliberately to reverse the doctrine of the first and second Man.[164:3] He says nothing about the Trinity of Divine Beings that was usual in Gnosticism, nothing about the Divine Mother. His mind, for all its vehement mysticism, has something of that clean antiseptic quality that makes such early Christian works as the Octavius of Minucius Felix and the Epistle to Diognetus so infinitely refres.h.i.+ng. He is certainly one of the great figures in Greek literature, but his system lies outside the subject of this essay. We are concerned only with those last manifestations of h.e.l.lenistic religion which probably formed the background of his philosophy. It is a strange experience, and it shows what queer stuff we humans are made of, to study these obscure congregations, drawn from the proletariate of the Levant, superst.i.tious, charlatan-ridden, and helplessly ignorant, who still believed in G.o.ds begetting children of mortal mothers, who took the 'Word', the 'Spirit', and the 'Divine Wisdom', to be persons called by those names, and turned the Immortality of the Soul into 'the standing up of the corpses';[165:1] and to reflect that it was these who held the main road of advance towards the greatest religion of the western world.

I have tried to sketch in outline the main forms of belief to which h.e.l.lenistic philosophy moved or drifted. Let me dwell for a few pages more upon the characteristic method by which it reached them. It may be summed up in one word, Allegory. All h.e.l.lenistic philosophy from the first Stoics onward is permeated by allegory. It is applied to Homer, to the religious traditions, to the ancient rituals, to the whole world. To Sall.u.s.tius after the end of our period the whole material world is only a great myth, a thing whose value lies not in itself but in the spiritual meaning which it hides and reveals. To Cleanthes at the beginning of it the Universe was a mystic pageant, in which the immortal stars were the dancers and the Sun the priestly torch-bearer.[165:2]

Chrysippus reduced the Homeric G.o.ds to physical or ethical principles; and Crates, the great critic, applied allegory in detail to his interpretation of the all-wise poet.[166:1] We possess two small but complete treatises which ill.u.s.trate well the results of this tendency, Cornutus ?ep? ?e?? and the _Homeric Allegories_ of Herac.l.i.tus, a brilliant little work of the first century B. C. I will not dwell upon details: they are abundantly accessible and individually often ridiculous. A by-product of the same activity is the mystic treatment of language: a certain t.i.tan in Hesiod is named Koios. Why? Because the t.i.tans are the elements and one of them is naturally the element of ????t??, the Ionic Greek for 'Quality'. The Egyptian Isis is derived from the root of the Greek e?d??a?, Knowledge, and the Egyptian Osiris from the Greek ?s??? and ???? ('holy' and 'sacred', or perhaps more exactly 'lawful' and '_tabu_'). Is this totally absurd? I think not. If all human language is, as most of these thinkers believed, a divine inst.i.tution, a cap filled to the brim with divine meaning, so that by reflecting deeply upon a word a pious philosopher can reach the secret that it holds, then there is no difficulty whatever in supposing that the special secret held by an Egyptian word may be found in Greek, or the secret of a Greek word in Babylonian. Language is One. The G.o.ds who made all these languages equally could use them all, and wind them all intricately in and out, for the building up of their divine enigma.

We must make a certain effort of imagination to understand this method of allegory. It is not the frigid thing that it seems to us. In the first place, we should remember that, as applied to the ancient literature and religious ritual, allegory was at least a _vera causa_--it was a phenomenon which actually existed. Herac.l.i.tus of Ephesus is an obvious instance. He deliberately expressed himself in language which should not be understood of the vulgar, and which bore a hidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras did the same. The prophets and religious writers must have done so to an even greater extent.[167:1] And we know enough of the history of ritual to be sure that a great deal of it is definitely allegorical. The h.e.l.lenistic Age did not wantonly invent the theory of allegory.

And secondly, we must remember what states of mind tend especially to produce this kind of belief. They are not contemptible states of mind.

It needs only a strong idealism with which the facts of experience clash, and allegory follows almost of necessity. The facts cannot be accepted as they are. They must needs be explained as meaning something different.

Take an earnest Stoic or Platonist, a man of fervid mind, who is possessed by the ideals of his philosophy and at the same time feels his heart thrilled by the beauty of the old poetry. What is he to do? On one side he can find Zoilus, or Plato himself, or the Cynic preachers, condemning Homer and the poets without remorse, as teachers of foolishness. He can treat poetry as the English puritans treated the stage. But is that a satisfactory solution? Remember that these generations were trained habitually to give great weight to the voice of their inner consciousness, and the inner consciousness of a sensitive man cries out that any such solution is false: that Homer is not a liar, but n.o.ble and great, as our fathers have always taught us. On the other side comes Herac.l.i.tus the allegorist. 'If Homer used no allegories he committed all impieties.' On this theory the words can be allowed to possess all their old beauty and magic, but an inner meaning is added quite different from that which they bear on the surface. It may, very likely, be a duller and less poetic meaning; but I am not sure that the verses will not gain by the mere process of brooding study fully as much as they lose by the ultimate badness of the interpretation. Anyhow, that was the road followed. The men of whom I speak were not likely to give up any experience that seemed to make the world more G.o.dlike or to feed their spiritual and emotional cravings. They left that to the barefooted cynics. They craved poetry and they craved philosophy; if the two spoke like enemies, their words must needs be explained away by one who loved both.

The same process was applied to the world itself. Something like it is habitually applied by the religious idealists of all ages. A fundamental doctrine of Stoicism and most of the idealist creeds was the perfection and utter blessedness of the world, and the absolute fulfilment of the purpose of G.o.d. Now obviously this belief was not based on experience.

The poor world, to do it justice amid all its misdoings, has never lent itself to any such barefaced deception as that. No doubt it shrieked against the doctrine then, as loud as it has always shrieked, so that even a Posidonian or a Pythagorean, his ears straining for the music of the spheres, was sometimes forced to listen. And what was his answer?

It is repeated in all the literature of these sects. 'Our human experience is so small: the things of the earth may be bad and more than bad, but, ah! if you only went beyond the Moon! That is where the true Kosmos begins.' And, of course, if we did ever go there, we all know they would say it began beyond the Sun. Idealism of a certain type will have its way; if hard life produces an ounce or a pound or a million tons of fact in the scale against it, it merely dreams of infinite millions in its own scale, and the enemy is outweighed and smothered. I do not wish to mock at these Posidonian Stoics and Hermetics and Gnostics and Neo-Pythagoreans. They loved goodness, and their faith is strong and even terrible. One feels rather inclined to bow down before their altars and cry: _Magna est Delusio et praevalebit._

Yet on the whole one rises from these books with the impression that all this allegory and mysticism is bad for men. It may make the emotions sensitive, it certainly weakens the understanding. And, of course, in this paper I have left out of account many of the grosser forms of superst.i.tion. In any consideration of the balance, they should not be forgotten.

If a reader of Proclus and the _Corpus Hermetic.u.m_ wants relief, he will find it, perhaps, best in the writings of a gentle old Epicurean who lived at Oenoanda in Cappadocia about A. D. 200. His name was Diogenes.[169:1] His works are preserved, in a fragmentary state, not on papyrus or parchment, but on the wall of a large portico where he engraved them for pa.s.sers-by to read. He lived in a world of superst.i.tion and foolish terror, and he wrote up the great doctrines of Epicurus for the saving of mankind.

'Being brought by age to the sunset of my life, and expecting at any moment to take my departure from the world with a glad song for the fullness of my happiness, I have resolved, lest I be taken too soon, to give help to those of good temperament.

If one person or two or three or four, or any small number you choose, were in distress, and I were summoned out to help one after another, I would do all in my power to give the best counsel to each. But now, as I have said, the most of men lie sick, as it were of a pestilence, in their false beliefs about the world, and the tale of them increases; for by imitation they take the disease from one another, like sheep. And further it is only just to bring help to those who shall come after us--for they too are ours, though they be yet unborn; and love for man commands us also to help strangers who may pa.s.s by. Since therefore the good message of the Book has this wall and to set forth in public the medicine of the healing of mankind.'

The people of his time and neighbourhood seem to have fancied that the old man must have some bad motive. They understood mysteries and redemptions and revelations. They understood magic and curses. But they were puzzled, apparently, by this simple message, which only told them to use their reason, their courage, and their sympathy, and not to be afraid of death or of angry G.o.ds. The doctrine was condensed into four sentences of a concentrated eloquence that make a translator despair:[170:1] 'Nothing to fear in G.o.d: Nothing to feel in Death: Good can be attained: Evil can be endured.'

Of course, the doctrines of this good old man do not represent the whole truth. To be guided by one's aversions is always a sign of weakness or defeat; and it is as much a failure of nerve to reject blindly for fear of being a fool, as to believe blindly for fear of missing some emotional stimulus.

There is no royal road in these matters. I confess it seems strange to me as I write here, to reflect that at this moment many of my friends and most of my fellow creatures are, as far as one can judge, quite confident that they possess supernatural knowledge. As a rule, each individual belongs to some body which has received in writing the results of a divine revelation. I cannot share in any such feeling. The Uncharted surrounds us on every side and we must needs have some relation towards it, a relation which will depend on the general discipline of a man's mind and the bias of his whole character. As far as knowledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow resolutely their austere guidance. When they cease, as cease they must, we must use as best we can those fainter powers of apprehension and surmise and sensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has been reached as well as most high art and poetry: careful always really to seek for truth and not for our own emotional satisfaction, careful not to neglect the real needs of men and women through basing our life on dreams; and remembering above all to walk gently in a world where the lights are dim and the very stars wander.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

It is not my purpose to make anything like a systematic bibliography, but a few recommendations may be useful to some students who approach this subject, as I have done, from the side of cla.s.sical Greek.

For Greek Philosophy I have used besides Plato and Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Philodemus, Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_; Diels, _Doxographi Graeci_; von Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_; Usener, _Epicurea_; also the old _Fragmenta Philosophorum_ of Mullach.

For later Paganism and Gnosticism, Reitzenstein, _Poimandres_; Reitzenstein, _Die h.e.l.lenistischen Mysterienreligionen_; Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgic_ (also _Abraxas_, _Nekyia_, _Muttererde_, &c.); P.

Wendland, _h.e.l.lenistisch-Romische Kultur_; c.u.mont, _Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra_ (also _The Mysteries of Mithra_, Chicago, 1903), and _Les Religions Orientales dans l'Empire Romain_; Seeck, _Untergang der antiken Welt_, vol. iii; Philo, _de Vita Contemplativa_, Conybeare; Gruppe, _Griechische Religion and Mythologie_, pp. 1458-1676; Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907, with good bibliography in the introduction; articles by E. Bevan in the _Quarterly Review_, No. 424 (June 1910), and the _Hibbert Journal_, xi.

1 (October 1912). _Dok.u.mente der Gnosis_, by W. Schultz (Jena, 1910), gives a highly subjective translation and reconstruction of most of the Gnostic doc.u.ments: the _Corpus Hermetic.u.m_ is translated into English by G. R. S. Meade, _Thrice Greatest Hermes_, 1906. The first volume of Dr.

Scott's monumental edition of the _Hermetica_ (Clarendon Press, 1924) has appeared just too late to be used in the present volume.

For Jewish thought before the Christian era Dr. Charles's _Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_; also the same writer's _Book of Enoch_, and the _Religionsgeschichtliche Erklarung des Neuen Testaments_ by Carl Clemen, Giessen, 1909.

Of Christian writers apart from the New Testament those that come most into account are Hippolytis ([cross symbol] A. D. 250), _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, Epiphanius (367-403), _Panarion_, and Irenaeus ([cross symbol] A. D. 202), _Contra Haereses_, i, ii. For a simple introduction to the problems presented by the New Testament literature I would venture to recommend Prof. Bacon's _New Testament_, in the Home University Library, and Dr. Estlin Carpenter's _First Three Gospels_. In such a vast literature I dare not make any further recommendations, but for a general introduction to the History of Religions with a good and brief bibliography I would refer the reader to Salomon Reinach's _Orpheus_ (Paris, 1909; English translation the same year), a book of wide learning and vigorous thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[124:1] Mr. Marett has pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: _The Birth of Humility_, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative att.i.tude of mind. Psychologists cla.s.s the feelings bound up with flight, cowering, and prostration under the common head of "asthenic emotion". In plain English they are all forms of heart-sinking, of feeling unstrung. This general type of innate disposition would seem to be the psychological basis of Humility. Taken in its social setting, the emotion will, of course, show endless shades of complexity; for it will be excited, and again will find practical expression, in all sorts of ways. Under these varying conditions, however, it is reasonable to suppose that what Mr.

McDougall would call the "central part" of the experience remains very much the same. In face of the sacred the normal man is visited by a heart-sinking, a wave of asthenic emotion.' Mr. Marett continues: 'If that were all, however, Religion would be a matter of pure fear. But it is not all. There is yet the positive side of the sacred to be taken into account.' It is worth remarking also that Schleiermacher (1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence without attempting to define the object towards which it was directed.

[129:1] Usener, _Epicurea_ (1887), pp. 232 ff.; Diels, _Doxographi Graeci_ (1879), p. 306; Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ (1903-5), Chrysippus 1014, 1019.

[133:1] Juv. x. 365 f.; Polyb. ii. 38, 5; x. 5, 8; xviii. 11, 5.