3, 5/, 2-4-. Jrom ti\t Sthraru nf llj? Eibrarg of J^rtttrrton Slj^nlngtral g^^mtnarg BR 163 .W45 1898 Wenley, Robert Mark, 1861- 1929. The preparation for r.hr 1 cit 1 ;qn-i t V in thp anr.ienti The Preparation for Christianity ^^vSxITFb!^ Thi V /^ IviAF-^cJi 1S24 Preparation for Christianity In the Ancient World A Study in the History of Moral Development y BY R. M.WENLEY, Sc.D.(Edm.), D.Phil. (Glas.) Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan sometime Honorary President of the Glasgow University Theological Society New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company Publishers of Evangelical Literature Copyright, 1898, by Fleming H. Revell Company. Preface Scholars who have themselves passed through a similar experience are well aware that the pro- duction of a small book of the class to which this belongs is more difficult, in some respects, than the composition of the customary exact academic monograph. Except in an attempt to make the past vivid, these pages lay no claim to special originality. Processes are entirely sup- pressed, results alone appear. The selection and compression, inseparable from the presentation, have been directed toward rendering the picture as a whole more impressive and less easily mis- taken. For the information of American readers I may add that this little book has been prepared for the Church of Scotland, ''Guild Series." ' The Guild is an organization of the young people of the Church. Among its many admirable activ- ities none is more praiseworthy than the provis- ion of this series of volumes designed to deepen the intelligent interest of the laity in all ques- tions connected with the origin, nature, history, and extension of the Christian religion. Although no similar organization exists in the United States, so far as I am aware, the numer- ous colleges and societies connected with the va- rious Churches are well calculated to carry on parallel work. It is in the hope that this sketch may be found useful by their members that I have ventured upon the present issue. 5 . 6 PREFACE Portions of the fifth chapter are reprinted from The Jewish Quarterly Review (London), a magazine far too little read by the Christian community, one containing some admirable studies of aspects of the Jewish faith in all ages. R. M. WENLEY. Ann Arbor, Micb.. ^ January , 1898. I The series of Guild Text-books are published in America by Fleming H. Revell Company. See list at end of this work. Contents Chap. Page. I. Introductory , 9 11. Socrates as a Missionary of the Hu- man Spirit , 24 III. Greek Self-Criticism , 50 IV. Salvation by Wisdom , 71 V. The Mission of the Jews 93 VI. The Advent of the Saviour 113 VII. The Preparation of the World .... 143 VIII. The Preparation of the Spirit .... 158 IX. Conclusion 183 Index 191 The Preparation for Christianity in the Ancient World; A Study in the History of Moral Development CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY " The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." — Rom. viii. 19. Whatever else it may or may not be, Chris- tianity is one of the great historical religions. It centres in a stupendous fact ; it was born into a universal empire, the state of which at the moment is matter of history ; all the circumstances of the time imperatively demanded the new revelation, and conspired to the successful propagation of the "good news." Accordingly, historical in- quiry may be directed to one of two points : either to the Person and Life of the Founder, or to the conditions that prepared the way before Him and speedily, when the immense obstacles are duly weighed, laid the old Roman world at His feet. Consideration of Christ's person and work is an altogether subordinate part of our present pur- pose, and attention must be concentrated mainly on pre-Christian customs and their meaning. For our problem is: — What were the essential features in the development of man's religious, moral, and social needs throughout the ancient Classical and Hebrew civilizations that ultimately ended in a spiritual impotence curable by Chris- tianity alone? lO PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY Obviously, in a study like this, everything turns upon the view of history adopted at the outset. If the past be no more than a series of haphazard occurrences, without inter-relationship and devoid of influences whereto results may be traced, then any discussion such as is now proposed becomes meaningless beforehand. A mere series fails in a deep sense to be a series at all. On the other hand, if the word Providence — old-fashioned as many now deem it — possess significance, if history be a single whole wherein events take their places as parts of a developing organism, and conse- quences may be read dependent upon numerous incidents that slowly but distinctly lead up to them, then a problem of enormous interest and fertility confronts us. There can be no question that the entire trend of modern inquiry has been in this direction, and, without further parley, its adoption may now be proclaimed. But, by way of introduction, one is compelled to analyze this doctrine somewhat more fully. Like all other subjects, history has its peculiar presuppositions. At first sight, these naturally appear to be very numerous. Nationalities, with corresponding divisions of territory, are immedi- ately conjured up. Battles and other mighty doings in endless kinds float vaguely through the brain. Fixed institutions, themselves the result of tedious conflict of opinion, occur to one. Man's sufferings and aspirations, his triumphs and disappointments and defeats successively, or to- gether, put in their several pleas for a hearing. The rise and fall of principalities and powers un- fold before the eye, or the clash of mighty forces, involving the rupture of momentous empires, breaks thunderously upon the inward ear. Yet after all, these, and such as these, may be summed up in a single and comparatively simple ex- INTRODUCTORY I I pression. History exists because man is a social being. Society, in the broadest sense, is its one presupposition. Till men have entered into combinations with one another, history remains unenacted, impossible. Nor can this association be viewed as accidental. No doubt, some few in- stances of it present unaccountable features ; but, nevertheless, association itself furnishes the prime condition under which men act, by a force that cannot be called compulsion, when, as indi- viduals or as groups, they rise to possession of significance worthy the name historical. We are so wedded now to analogies derived from scientific or quasi-scientific apparatus, that we often find it difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend what precisely ''a force that is not compulsion" implies. A man, we say, is the creature of circumstances, whether nearer, like his parents and upbringing, or remoter, like the institutions of his nation and the general temper- ament of his century. Or, again, we think we have explained him when we call him the child of his time. This idea, seductive by its very ease, fails to find warrant in the facts. If it be abundantly true that "God has so arranged the chronometry of our spirits that there shall be thousands of silent moments between the strik- ing hours," it is abundantly false to suppose that the "silent moments" are therefore lost or use- less. The impression of compelling force so dis- tinctly left upon us by historical movements may be traced to asimilar "chronometry." Millions of silent souls there are, have been, and always will be, — only some few strike. And the im- portant fact lies, not in the silence of many and the sonority of some, but in the utterance by the few of the innermost thoughts of the many. '* He told me all that ever I did/' said the 12 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY woman of Samaria, illustrating by this expression one of the profoundest features of universal his- tory. The countless dumb thousands are not lost, for they are the real originators of the ideas voiced by the one. In him these ideas are brought to a point, from him they go forth de- fined and act with missionary power, transform- ing all those who recognize them for their own, and insensibly influencing many who have never even heard the doctrine. Now this is possible, nay, eternal, because societies are held together by spiritual bonds stronger far than steel. Even when the groundlings appear to be constrained, they are simply coming into closer contact with the opportunities through which alone they can build up their fullest life. Air and water and mother earth no more hamper the plant than the society to which he belongs hampers the peasant, the laborer, the underling in any sort. Prince and president, prophet and poet, are in very sooth ministers as much as the merest ploughboy. For all must serve in order to arrive at the most meagre kingdom. And why? The spiritual links of society are not dependent upon intellectual preeminence, nor are they bound up with intimate knowledge of the phys- ical universe. Man forges them out of that dis- tinctive quality of his, the ability to form pur- poses, to frame ideals. Ideals constitute the warp and woof of society, thus only they are the web of history. Hard as this saying may seem at the first blush, it only expresses one of the most familiar facts in common life. We all live upon purposes. They not only rule us directly, but often exhibit startling power of self-inversion. Is not the road to hell paved with good intentions, heaven won by those most scarred in closest com- bat with iniquity? Our days, our weeks, our INTRODUCTORY 1 3 months, our years, nay, our years upon years, are laid out by us beforehand. On the whole, we intend to realize such and such aims ; and in their beginnings all aims are equally ideals. They do not exist in reality, as the saying is, yet they are more real than the solidest things. They do not live simply in the brain ; for while they must doubtless be referred to brain-work for their origin, this is immediately reinforced by sentiment for their approval or consecration, and by will for their accomplishment. But, further, there are ideals and ideals. Our ordinary day-in, day-out designs present for the greater part no insurmountable obstacles to their execution. The same hardly holds true of the larger purposes that control a lifetime or an age, a people or an entire civilization. When I say, I shall go to Chicago on Wednesday, or I shall travel to Scotland next month, I am sensible that there is a difference in degree of difficulty in carrying out the two intentions. But there is a difference in kind, a gulf absolutely fixed, be- tween these resolves and others such as those; I shall try to write a really great book, or, henceforward, I shall try to lead a completely righteous life. We cannot state the two classes of intention with any relative equality of assur- ance in respect of results. In the former cases, means and end so fit that achievement appears easy, and actually is so. In the latter, an un- bridged interval stands between the resolve as conceived and the design as completed — as ac- tually built into life. Now, it is precisely in ex- ecuting the latter that man affords ever increas- ingly conclusive proof of his origin. Passing along these higher paths, he grows sensibly into the image of God, bringing forth from the riches of his own soul both the purpose and the mate- 14 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY rial to work its realization. For these designs demand a strenuousness, an expenditure of spir- itual energy, a militant idealism in short, such as never even enter into the former calculations. But the reason why history is fashioned out of ideals essentially identical in nature with the latter rather than with the former examples, is simply because these are the controlling forces that orig- inate, nourish, and mould the associations called tribes, nations, and races. And in these ideals all men so associated are partakers, notwithstand- ing the comparative unconsciousness of the im- mense majority. Thus, while many seem to be swept along as by an irresistible current, this view of their life is entirely misleading. All that the greatest can render to his age or to his country is, in larger part, a rendering back. Thanks to superior insight, he seizes upon the most salient opportunities offered by his universe, working upon materials that lie equally open to all his fellows, nay, upon materials which they cannot but already share with him. The com- pulsion to which, as we imagine, the mass lies in bondage is but another aspect under which the same opportunities are expressing themselves. All that is of worth in the career of the most un- distinguished person flows from his myriad neigh- bors ; and if he apparently pay more dearly for it than the so-called leaders, it is simply because he obtains less, commonly by his own fault, from the only source whence anything at all is to be gained. It is '' better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of sin for ever." Our opportunities are not those of an Armenian, and if we grumble at taxes and tariffs, we are just forgetting for a moment that no opportunity whatsoever can be had in a social vacuum. The thing is a contradiction in fact, — INTRODUCTORY 1 5 it never did, it never can, exist. In other words, the compulsion wherein, at first sight, history seems so prodigal is but another name for free- dom, for the attendant circumstances in which alone human beings are capable of rising On stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. Nowhere, except in a universe of society, can the major ideals be generated, and nohow, ex- cept by the means offered in such a universe alone, can an attempt be made to realize them with faintest hope of success. As man is the strongest of created beings by virtue of his soci- ability, so too, in isolation, he is the most pov- erty-stricken. Therefore, only in weakness, in dependence, is his strength made perfect. The more he leans upon his fellow-men, the more typ- ically human he becomes ; yet the more he lays himself open to the intolerable griefs which mis- understanding and faction and death every day inevitably bring. The spots wherein he may be sorely stricken tend to multiply themselves infi- nitely as the enrichment of his humanity proceeds. The heartless brute who beats his wife and starves his children, the sensual dog who exists upon momentary pleasure, are indeed under compul- sion, if you choose to say so. They are thus driven just because they have decided to be brutes and dogs, — not human beings, who live their truest life when they are apprehended of some vision from a better world which they strive, amid many discouragements, to realize in common workaday tasks. This very striving it is that makes these strenuous souls historical. Though subject to manifold disappointments, they stand forth the true potters of permanence, 1 6 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY out of limitation they prove themselves the builders of infinity. Thus, and only thus, paradox though it be, *Uhe earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." For we are all creatures and sons at one and the same time. As creatures, we recognize ourselves the subjects of numerous restrictions — of body, of mind, and of the society or period into which we are born. As sons of God, on the other hand, we are creators of influential aspirations, and serve ourselves heirs to the immortal achieve- ments of the ages. So, limited though we may be, we look for another country, and hail great men — especially those of our own hour — enthusi- astically, because they intimate to us, with a prophecy which we at once recognize as true, the actual presence of this other world in the condi- tions governing our most prosaic duties, in the sweet relations that render life worth living, in the faiths for which we would die, not because they are true, but because they are ours, seeing that with them we identify our in- nermost well-being and that of our contem- poraries. The pity is, that we so often fail to recognize the sources of their greatness, fail to perceive that these few who have proved all things and held fast to that which is good in our eyes, are in uttermost verity bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Thus we miss the self- sacrifice that is the sole secret of their power, and, whimpering over limitations that must be accepted to be overpassed, still continue to pose as if we alone forsooth were thus unjustifiably cribbed, cabined, and confined. So, almost de- liberately, men put away the joys of filling their time and place; for they forget that the time is the present, that the place is here and at hand, INTRODUCTORY I 7 in a vain effort to lay hold upon a time that is not now, and to seize a place which is supposed to be anywhere but near. So, too often, what wonder that life is declaimed against as A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Unconscious that, in the vast organism of human- ity, whereof history is but the outer record, each has his function to subserve, many men remain creatures. Yet, for all this, they cannot re- nounce their sonship entirely, because, so cir- cumstanced, they yearn the more eagerly for a deliverer. And the deliverer often does come in his own way and in his own good time, setting free the captive and realizing the earnest expec- tation, not by what he achieves, but by the spirit of his work. For, always and everywhere, the chiefest lesson he can read to the earnestly ex- pectant is, that * ' all are born to observe good order, few to establish it." Accordingly, despite our varying terms, that frequently bring dire confusion upon us, every man, be he of a tribe, of a nation, of a civiliza- tion or of an age, inhabits a city whose builder and maker is God. He is heir to a spiritual uni- verse, characteristically revealed in its more en- nobling ideals — in its religion, in its morals, in its social institutions. But, as human, he can- not remain a mere passive recipient. It is his to be father as well as heir. Yet to this end he must be wed — wed to the opportunities that these very ideals proffer. The parable of the talents is no mere tale, it is of the ultimate essence of all progress. Unconsciously, man is thus ever united to his humane inheritance, — not always l8 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY consciously. In proportion as he earnestly ex- pects the manifestation, he is unconscious, and no more than a recipient ; in proportion as he con- tributes to it he is positively a father, and reveals his own sonship in returning something, if not .double, for all he has received. In neither case jcan he escape the unity wherein, by his very ex- istence, he partakes. He is ever attempting to live out the pervading ideals of his spiritual uni- verse, waiting with earnest expectation when he recognizes them not, manifesting them, and him- self, when he seeks to realize them. On the one hand a creature, he vindicates his divine son- ship on the other. But invariably, creature and son are of one blood, because the universe that both inhabit is the Lord's. The passion for unity — the central idea of the nineteenth century — differs not one whit for the day-laborer and the master of all the poets, for the burdened agnostic, the religious enthusiast and the great scientific discoverer. They but perceive the same principle in different lights. One has it in his trade union ; the other sublimates it in his God's in His heaven — All's right with the world ! the third detects it in his *' differentiation rising to ever more complex integration ; " the next mir- rors it in his kingdom of heaven ; and the last reads it everywhere by aid of the operative con- ception of evolution. All know that man has annihilated space and time, that at length toil possesses its reward and the world is one. For all alike the ideal, constituting the universe wherein they live and move and have their be- ing, is the same. Yet no one is an expectant creature in the same sense as any other ; no one INTRODUCTORY 1 9 a son of God in precise measure with his fellows. By their very contrasts they strongly confirm the disclosure of a single pervasive unity. So it ever has been, so, humanly speaking, it ever must be. And when we come to look across the spread- out page of history, the records of the past ac- quire tenfold meaning, and can be intelligently read only in proportion as we are swift to .recog- nize all this. Men have achieved greatness and nations have handed on imperishable things — they have possessed significance in short — solely as they have forgotten to ask, " What shall we eat ? or, What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" and have remembered to seek ''first the kingdom of God and his right- eousness." That is to say, the world has been laid under obligations, that can never be repaid, precisely by those who have been quick to grasp the essential, the ideal, element in the universe they inhabited. Thus alone have all these things — power, fame, permanence in achievement for progress, goodness, vital truth — been added unto them. The greatness of the United States in these last days does not consist in anything ma- terial, but in the simple truth — its justification — that it is one of the chief civilizing agencies now operating on this earth. On the other hand, whenever, — their task done or but half com- pleted, — societies have loosened their hold upon spiritual principles, decay, death, and dissolution have overtaken them with awful swiftness. They have passed, but not entirely. For, with that grim irony wherein history so abounds, the very thing that one generation died for or the next disdained has continued to traverse the centuries as an imperishable element in the life of later ages. When the Greek forgot his joy in the 20 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY beauteous earth, his matchless artistic cunning fled him ; when, in his restless factiousness, he omitted his primary duties to the city-state that had gifted him his all, the kingdom that he once enjoyed vanished into thin air with startling rapidity. When the Jew turned his back upon the higher side of prophetic idealism, his own God forsook His tender care of the chosen na- tion ; when he looked for an earthly Messiah, his race had seeming punishment in the shattering by Roman legionaries, its true reward in the renewal of prophetism, not this time as a far off ideal, but as an accomplished fact — the divinest that history can ever know. So too, after that Ro- man character had borne immortal witness to its strength by the conquest of half the world, it was warped by the very weight of its own achieve- ments. Yet some relish of the old stock still re- mained to accomplish subjection of the other half and complete the circle of empire. Then, in her colossal emptiness, Rome swallowed all suggestions and all aids from every quarter of the known universe, took for herself everything that was best, having the while nothing to repay. The primacy thus departed from her, and the magnificent supremacy she had sought by ma- terial means set itself down in spiritual shape upon her seven storied hills. It is indispensable, then, to remember the profound sense in which all history partakes of the character of a gospel. Its every important incident is compacted of ideals, of purposes, that are drawn forth from the unexpressed con- sciousness of the mass by the greater spirits, whose winged words return to the people ir- resistibly invoking their allegiance and banding them together ever more closely for ends that no physical eye can see. We of these latter days INTRODUCTORY 21 profess deep awe at the thought that a word from Queen or Czar or Kaiser can move hundreds of ships and millions of men to the work of de- struction. The spectacle that history affords is incomparably more impressive. The impercep- tible, the intangible, which we so often count for unreal, has swayed, not specially contrived machines or groups trained with a purpose, but entire nations and whole dynasties from the earliest known past and continuously on through all the eras. Its formative action has not been confined to this or to that, to these or to those, but has appeared ubiquitously in every depart- ment of life operating, not so much to maim and to kill and to ruin, as to construct — a labor more difficult beyond compare — to construct, too, all that is most vital and permanent in the heritage of humanity. Thus, there are those among us who, even at this distant date, experience the still living charm of Greek art ; or enter with fresh emotion into the sublimities of the Jewish faith ; or recognize in the daily blessings of law and order the near presence of Rome's universal sway. Nay, some of us possess inborn affinities for one or other of these ancient orders. Not that we can actually be Greeks or Jews or Ro- mans, but our spirits answer to their several ideals, perceiving that there, and perhaps only there, lies somethmg for the realization of which it is worth while striving in our lives. ** We are in connection with the whole universe, as with the future, so with the past. It depends upon ourselves entirely, on the direction we take and the perseverance we show, which of the various influences affect us most." Accordingly, it is impossible for us to forego the study of these old yet ever new matters. And the more we ponder them, seeking to arrive at a just appreciation of 22 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY their ultimate meaning, the more we are enabled to see what exactly they were, what happened to be their excellencies and their limitations, what, above all, we owe them and must strive to ex- tract from them. Only thus, too, can we un- derstand why the Christian centuries are ever- more separated from the Classical and Jewish as by a mighty chasm fixed, and come to fathom the ^ height and depth of the mystery that is in Christ Jesus. For it is not His mystery, but ours also. The atmosphere of our lives was created by Him, far more completely than the majority of us are even vaguely aware ; our institutions have been moulded by His spirit ; our most ef- fective ideals centre in Him ; and upon His career and all its consequences rests our hope for eternity. These are not opinions, but facts capable of no dispute whatsoever, simply because they are historical, and have been becoming more and more of the essence of history for nigh two thousand years. Consequently, no Christian can have a firmer foundation for his faith than that which rests immovable upon the historical influence issuing from the life of Christ. The events that at length called imperatively for this influence, the nature of the revolution that rendered it paramount and permanent, are now to pass before us. Surely no more impor- tant or profoundly attractive study could be un- dertaken ! Yet its very importance stands in the way of its simplicity. We are bound to confine ourselves to results rather than to processes. For it is of the essence of the matter to strip off the contingent, the momentary, in order to obtain clearer glimpses of the constitutive, the everlast- ing. Despite this, however, the work is well worth doing, because only by undertaking it can a man hope to arrive at that living interest which INTRODUCTORY 23 alone will enable him to arrive at a vital under- standing of all that the Master accomplished. In the discussion of these questions it is neces- sary to begin with the Periclean age of Greece. This starting-point justifies itself, for there man first arrived at some consciousness of his own worth ; and, before he had apprehended this, the problems which imperatively called for the reply made by the Christian revelation were practically non-existent. CHAPTER II SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT "Know thyself." Every effort to understand and appreciate the life-work of Socrates is foredoomed to failure if it be not accompanied by dismissal of the habits of thought to which we are accustomed and whereby we inevitably judge all things. Further, this unmaking of our common experience must needs take place chiefly in relation to political af- fairs. Socrates was a missionary to a certain people, and in his preaching — for he was a preacher as much as a philosopher — the concep- tions that ruled Greek society are traceable throughout, exercising paramount formative in- fluence. The defects and the excellencies, like the complete import, of his message are Hellenic and Hellenic only. It would be easy to con- demn his morality by applying Christian stand- ards; ^ easy to place him on a parity with Christ, by remembering only his disadvantages and all that he accomplished despite them ; easy to read modern speculative notions into his more definite theorizings. But all this and its kind must be rigidly eschewed if we are to view him with any hope of realizing what he actually was and did, of re-living in our own thought the inner work- ings that led to his wonderful vision, and invested him with such rare, home-thrusting authority. *Cf. Plato's Symposion, 22yy Xenophon's Metnorabilia iii. II. 24 SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 25 What sort of place, then, was that Athens whose streets he roamed, whose youth he so pro- foundly moved, ^ whose leaders were his intimates, whose judges he fearlessly faced, and where he met his doom? When, employing the current phrase, we call it a city, our associations are apt to render our conception of it wrong or distorted in nearly all essential particulars. A modern city, such as New York or Chicago, San Fran- cisco or St. Louis, is, first and foremost, a self- governing municipality ; its concerns and pow- ers for rule are, in greater part, parochial — local, not imperial. Favorable situation, traditional callings, or similar causes have aggregated men in it for the purposes of commerce, of adminis- tration, of legal advice, of education. Modern inventions and modern discoveries have enabled them best to exploit certain commodities within its compass. Gas and electricity, water and tramways, drainage, street-cleansing, galleries, museums, parks and police supply the leading affairs for which the municipality, as a govern- ment, exists. With alliances, peace and war, the customs and the civil services, and other national interests it does not deal. To put it briefly, the city is a secondary political association ; indeed, as some understand the term, it is not political at all. For a man's real citizenship centres, not so much in his town, as in his nationality, of which the municipality forms a larger or smaller, a more or less important part. Even when we heighten the colors of the picture and say that, in proportion to population, London is the most important city belonging to any contemporary nationality, this truth is in no degree altered. I Cf. Plutarch's Life of AlcibiadeSy iv. ; Plato's Symposion^ 201. 26 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY For London is not England, its people are not the English nation. Beyond the town stands what we now call the State. But even this hardly helps us here, because the notion of the state, entertained in son\e vague way by every one, is at complete odds with the Greek conception. The ramifications of the modern state are so ex- tended, its complexity is so inconceivably intri- cate, and its functions have become so specialized that the society often seems, in our eyes, to have got the better of its constituent members. No private citizen to-day would be such a fool as to proffer his opinion on the proper mode of design- ing an ironclad, he would not be so blind to the interests of national defence as to suppose that a ship's armor, cannon, and chandlery could be most satisfactorily settled at the polls. Now, we citizens get over the obvious difficulties here en- tailed by acquiescing in the appointment of skilled officials who spend their lives in attending to these matters, and who naturally resent undue interference on the part of those who are ulti- mately their masters, nay, their paymasters. This process extends to all manner of specialized details, and tends to go on expanding till at length we come to regard the state as a thing wherein we have little interest, except on polling days, and to which, on other days, we must for the most part give submission — a submission sometimes rendered not a little unpalatable by "the insolence of office." In this regard the modern state is not merely separated from the in- dividual, but appears to stand over against, if not actually to thwart, him in daily business. Our patriotism is for our country, not for our exec- utive ; we eminently fail to associate the police- man with any of our ideals. Once more, such is the division just indicated SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 27 that, even when we come into closer relation with the state, we tend to confuse it, not with the whole body of the people, but, on the con- trary, with certain persons, especially with prom- inent men known to us for their political lean- ings. *' Cleveland" stands for something far more definite than the silent officials at the Trea- sury; " McKinley " looms larger, and com- mands incomparably profounder regard than the permanent Under-Secretary of a Department. And so, such is the paradox, on public occasions we hiss the names of men who, were they simple scholars or professors of physics, we should pro- foundly respect, never dreaming of extending to them aught but the courtesy due to their superior knowledge and ability. Yet we hiss these very men, though they be our fellow-citizens who are accomplishing incomparably more for the com- monwealth than ourselves, because we link them with certain doctrines about policy which, little as we may be entitled to an opinion, we do not approve. In other words, just as in the person of the tax-gatherer, we look at the state from the outside, and suspiciously, so in the persons of politicians we view it in an equally external man- ner, and sometimes with positive hate. In both cases, the distinction between the state and the individual is emphasized, doubtless with danger- ous results, and this because modern conditions are of such complex character as to make Aris- totle's taking in of the whole state "at a single view" quite out of the question. Plainly, this situation must reveal excellencies, perils, and problems of its own. The point to be persistently remembered is that they are wholly diverse from those developed in ancient Greece. Our city is emphatically not a new Athens, our state is as emphatically not a Hellenic organization. Man 28 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY has ceased to be a "political animal," as the Greeks termed him, and his social side has thrown out thousands of new filaments. In the nature of the case he has delegated his personal sovereign privileges to those whom he elects, and to those whom his chosen representatives appoint, reserving to himself little more than the right to _ vote, and to grumble when he considers that this voting has not transformed the world sufficiently to his wishes. Accordingly, he thinks of himself primarily as a man, only secondarily as a citizen. He is ever insisting on his rights, he needs the assessment paper to remind him of his duties, and he takes small trouble to conceal his dislike for this too regular memorial. The divergence between the Greek and the modern state might be conveyed by saying that the one was an organism, while the other is an organization. Yet, even thus, the constituent material differences remain to be filled in. And one finds it hard, very hard, to realize these now, mainly because our present civic situation affords scarcely any point of departure, much less any conspicuous instance of parallelism. If we could conceive of ourselves as at once electors, mem- bers of parliament, departmental officials, and, when our turn came round, policemen, we should be in a fair way to comprehend something of the all-embracing claims and opportunities made and offered by the Greek city-state. The occasional and oft-resented call to serve on a jury is, per- haps, our single point of contact. This consti- tutes a legitimate claim by the community upon us. Our peers, such is the law, must be judged by their peers, of whose number we are. Now, in its best days — just closing in Socrates' time — this body politic, an organism whereof all were equally members sharing alike duties and rights SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 29 yet without marked consciousness of any contrast between them, was an actually realized fact, re- alized with its full equipment of excellencies and defects in the common life of the men of the day. Take a modern nation ; gather into one of its smaller cities all that is representative in the best sense of the national spirit — statesmen, artists, poets, soldiers, thinkers, scientific workers, and so on ; suppose all to be, by the mere fact of their citizenship, active members of the Common Council ; imagine them all equally, and with perfect cheerfulness, recipients in rotation of the public offices great and small ; transform the duties of the chiefest from the parochialisms of aldermen and contractors to questions of high state policy ; infuse all with the incomparable pride that such a city would naturally generate, and furnish them with cultivated leisure by sup- plying a slave population to provide the means of subsistence; finally, surround them with all that is most splendid in buildings, statues, and artistic ornamentation, suppose the mightiest literary achievements to have sprung from the spirit of their community, give them a religion that is the natural halo of their civic life — present them, in short, with everything that makes for universal culture and tends to foster a justifiable enthusiasm in its conquests, and you will have conjured up, at least in external shape, something like the city-state of Socrates. Athens was the Athenian's country, the source of his most elevating traditions ; his nation, the seat of his most inspiriting conceptions ; his church, the guardian of his finest hopes. From Athens flowed the ideals worth living for; the opportunities that, just because he was her citi- zen, rendered him the highest conceivable type possible for man. On the other hand, his state 30 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY claimed his time, intelligence, service — his entire life even — in just compensation for the inesti- mable advantages bestowed. There were no men then, only Athenians. AVe have, therefore, to reconstruct in imagination a comparatively smalP and comparatively self-sufficing city. Under- neath a brilliant sky, a joyous open-air life was possible, and it was surrounded by everything that could entrance the eye and elevate the spirit. Magnificent temples and other public buildings abounded ; statues and sculptures, still even in their melancholy isolation and fragmentariness the wonder and despair of the world, everywhere appeared, not merely as embellishments, but rather as embodiments of the living genius of a living people. Soul-stirring dramas were enacted in the wonderful roofless theatres; poems, per- fect masterpieces in their own field, were de- claimed before the whole body of the citizens, from whose inmost spirit they had distilled the essential flavor. After a manner which we can barely conceive, ideals shone forth on all sides — ideals proved in the terrific struggle with the bar- barian, or living now and here as the character- istic inspiration of the community gradually called forth into ever fresh and varying expres- sion. Yet again, and now in the domain of practical politics, democracy had achieved such realization as it never had before nor is likely ever to see again. The delegation of executive and legislative power to popularly elected repre- sentatives which we of to-day term democratic government, was completely unknown. The people did not simply vote at greater or lesser in- 1 The most reliable authorities infer that the adult pop- ulation of free citizens at this time was from 30,000 to 35,000. SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 3 1 tervals, they actually governed in their own per- sons. All could debate the chief questions of state, all would undoubtedly be called at some time or other to serve as public officials. We are aware that, like his neighbors, Socrates acted in such capacities. But some one may say, *MVhy, this was a socialistic state." The answer is, Yes and No. It was socialistic in so far as the city demanded service from each and all, and prescribed the rel- ative duties. But these ministerial functions were regarded as a hallowed trust. The citizen never dreamed of any advantage to accrue to him as an individual apart from the common weal. Yet, it was not socialistic in the sense of embodying designs for alteration of the machin- ery of government so as to fill empty bellies or to find some little leisure for ''sweated" work- ers. Its horizon was never bounded by such material ends, because the whole system stood rooted in a national growth, wherein individual lives found a place ready for them, just as naturally as a limb, an eye, or a tooth. Herein lay its redemption from that " middlingness," that satisfaction with catering for lower aims, which appears as a persistent feature in many recent schemes. For, although the city took a man's life, it rendered him back the sole con- ditions under which he could achieve the most admirably balanced humanity. Each had his freedom, because all were quick to perceive that only on the excellence of its constituent mem- bers can a state be surely based. ^ The result was a galaxy of men of genius hardly to be paralleled in later times, except by the assembled talent of 1 Cf. Demosthenes, Aristogeit. xvii. ; Thucydides, ii, ^7 ; Euripides, Medea, 825. 32 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY the nations representing whole periods, never to be approached by any city, not even by Rome with a universe at her back. Poets and states- men, sculptors, painters and musicians, orators and philosophers, jostle one another in a bewilder- ment of ability. So closely knit is the organism that each member can, after a fashion, by taking thought, add a cubit to his stature. He stands forth magnified by the surrounding atmosphere of his community, — and this altogether without meretricious assistance. The universal spirit in- carnates itself in the individuals, and they, in turn, are capable of being so colossal just on ac- count of the spell that society exercises over them. In losing themselves they find surest personal immortality. For a few brief years this marvellous political ideal, inspired by Greek sanity and moderation, was actual in Athens. Toward the close of that golden age, when the shadows of evening were creeping up the Long Walls, Socrates began to think and to utter his thoughts. It has been said of him that he was the first of the Greeks who was not wholly Greek, and this statement embodies a profound truth. A people, and especially a people so highly organized as to be fittingly likened to a living thing, remains in the flower of its self-expression only so long as it refrains from reflecting upon its own image, from criticising itself into something more perfect — so long as no ideal utterly beyond its conditions and not to be realized in them, creates disturb- ance. For a fortunate period, unity with nature, and a homelike joy in the beautiful, mark Greek character. The early thinkers of the race were philosophers only in the limited sense in which we still apply the name to those who pursue pure science. Their desire was to discern the un- SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 33 changing, the abiding, not in humanity, but in those ever shifting material phenomena that furnish the most striking accompaniments of life. Deep questions about conduct, about the nature of mind, about God and religion had not oc- curred to them. They are astonishingly non- moral ; and this is but the counterpart of the artistic bent of tlieir nation's genius. So far they were contented with life, for no break be- tween man as he is and man as he ought to be had yet accentuated itself. The Little lift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all, appeared first to Socrates, and, for the most part, he was unconscious of the issues wherewith his discovery was fraught. Looking at his time through the perspective of centuries this is now plain to us, and we can also focus the causes that elicited his epoch-making message, " Know thy- self." Three leading changes may be specified as em- bodying the immediate influences whereto Soc- rates responded. To produce a complete picture, other and less conspicuous movements would certainly fall to be considered. But these, once more, affiliate themselves upon the main tendencies, to which we now turn for a little. (i) The old Greek religion, as represented most picturesquely in Homer, was an imaginative rather than an ethical faith. The Hellenes, be- ing at one with the world and with themselves, were fain to rest satisfied with a religion based upon personification. They read themselves at once into and out of the varied natural processes. Consequently, they worshipped gods who ap- 34 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY peared, not as abstract qualities like the old Roman deities, but as well-defined people who, in the main, evinced in ideal perfection traits that the Greeks freely recognized for their own. Rooted at first in the nature-worship common to the Aryan stock,^ religion gradually came to be more and more associated with human qualities. The gods of Olympos, as the legend runs, drove out the elder and less humane deities who begat them. By an imaginative flight, effortless because unconscious, the Hellenic gods assumed clearly marked individual characteristics for the Greek genius. They could be represented, and were, as a matter of fact, artistically bodied forth, with as much precision as men. It was not necessary to torture stone into all kinds of horrible and grotesque shapes in order to symbolize them. Nay, symbolism was not required, because Zeus, Athene, and the rest had lineaments as familiar as those of Pericles or Phryne. In short, nature - worship deepened in inwardness as it lost in multiplicity of material manifestation. Psycho- logical qualities replaced physical events. Valor and wisdom and love stood where lightning and rain and germination had been. The gods came to be with man, not against him. But, unfortunately, polytheism, or the worship of many deities, each Ihjiited in a specific way, can never be altered so as to bear the weight of moral attribution which is in its very essence in- finite. At first the Greeks did not perceive this, but it was inevitable that the perception should awaken sooner or later. What heralded its ap- pearance was, of course, direct reflection upon the conditions out of which moral qualities grow. And these ''second thoughts" unavoidably re- » Cf. Homer's Odyssey, v. 282. SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 35 suited in a tendency to disparage the traditional deities. For men came to observe, first, that they were as good as their gods,^ and then they vaguely felt the presence of a spark within their clod revealing possibilities of infinitely greater import than any the gods had to show. This break with the ancient faith followed what we should now deem a strange path. Art wrought its beginnings. The Greek artistic genius im- mortalized itself in two principal achievements — sculpture and poetry. Sculpture was inspired by, and, one might even say, acted in the interest of, the Olympian pantheon. But Poetry, par- ticularly in the tragedies of ^schylus^ and Sophocles, departed from the gods as persons, and devoted itself to the setting, development, and resolution of moral problems — of problems implied in the very existence of the qualities wherewith the Greek had tmcoiisciotisly come to gift his deities. By their agency the Hellenic mind was brought into direct contact with ethical questions, and, by reason of the matchless man- ner in which they were portrayed, took breath- less interest in their presentation. So opened the course of reflection that ultimately undermined the authority even of the Thunder-bearer, even of the Guardian of the Mother-city. When Soc- rates lived, the effects of this process were already keenly felt, especially by those master minds among whom he was so conspicuous. (2) For about two centuries prior to Socrates, Greek thinkers illustrated the same unconscious- ness in regard to ethical questions, and the same sense of unity with the outer world as their na- » Cf. Euripides, Ion, 885. « Cf., for example, /Eschylus, EumenideSy 297 ; and Aga- memnon^ 367. 36 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY tion evinced in the realm of religion. It never occurred to them to investigate systematically the nature of man as a moral being, to inquire into the office and operation of the mental powers, or to ask how the conviction that knowledge is true comes to be generated. Their thought was di- rected in every case to what is now usually called the problem of substance. That is to say, they sought to discover the one unchanging thing that, despite the endless passing events of the physical world — summer and winter, day and night, seed-time and harvest — remains unaltered and unaffected. This attracted them because, plainly, from it the visible world must proceed, and thereto it must at the last return. Now a problem such as this involves several assumptions which, without satisfactory investigation, are taken for true. It must be assumed, for example, that such a substance does actually exist some- where ; that it lies outside of and in separation from the mind ; and that, notwithstanding this division, the mind is somehow or other able to attain true knowledge of it. But, unfortunately, all this is tantamount to supposing that the most fundamental questions of philosophy are non- sensical. And such was precisely the situation of the Greek physical philosophers as they are called. The contrast, much less the antagonism, between the human mind and the material world had never struck them, they were so much at home on the earth. The possibility of a conflict between the two was as unheard of as the possi- bility that the gods cannot be immortal men and still remain gods. Upon the development of this philosophical phase we cannot enter here. It must suffice to indicate the results reached by the time of Socrates. Two conclusions — a positive and a negative — had emerged. If substance — SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 37 the one and unchangeable — be at the back of all things, it cannot be simply one. The different phenomena wherein the world abounds could not be produced by any such agency. Therefore, there must be an infinite number of substances (atoms) identical in their constituent qualities which, in some way, happen to come together so as to frame the world revealed to us by our senses. In other words, the universe is ultimately, not one, but many. On the negative side a very curious inference had been drawn. It had been argued by one school that our senses deceive us^ when they inform us that the universe is stable and unchanging. With equal force and show of evidence, it had been urged by other thinkers that our senses deceive us, when they lead us to believe that nothing but change is constantly tak- ing place in the physical world. Atomism, or the reality of many individual things, was the positive result; a common conviction that the senses are deceptive, the negative. Both were conclusions precipitated from a philosophical in- quiry into which neither the problems of mental equipment nor of moral aspiration had effectively entered. (3) New dilificulties thus growing out of old beliefs, and for this very reason apparently de- manding a solution in antagonism with them, in- variably tend to foster scepticism. This tendency was at flood-tide when Socrates lived. A fresh group of thinkers, called Sophists, had arisen who undertook to furnish the quick, yet puzzled Greek with some one surety amid his increasing doubts, ^schylus and Sophocles had traveled beyond the traditional conceptions of the gods ; Parmenides and Heracleitus, while at odds on positive theory, were equally agreed that the senses are deceptive — and the senses were as- 38 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY sumed to furnish the solid material of knowl- edge. The Sophists seized upon these points and, for a moment, seemed likely to sway Greek thought. Their argument ran : In the religious sphere and in that of our knowledge of things there is no longer any certainty. Nevertheless, an easy way of deliverance lies open. There is no reason whatever why a man should question his own opinions. If ''black" seem "white" to him, " white " let it be, despite all protests on the part of his neighbors. One man's opinion, if the senses do deceive, is quite as good as that of another. Individual bias is the sole and ultimate test, seeing that things are appearances and without fixed reality. Here the positive re- sult of atomism coincides with the negative one of scepticism. The individual is the real, just as his opinion is the truth. Any one can perceive that a doctrine of this kind — and its professors — would never have ac- quired influence but for some conspiring causes. And so it was with the Sophists. History be- came their ally. From a small, self-contained city-state, Athens had suddenly risen to be the first power in the Eastern world. Head of Greece in the momentous struggle with Persia, she had come by a great reward. Her sovereign people ceased to be citizens and became ad- ministrators of semi-imperial affairs. Conse- quently success in political life loomed larger than ever, its opportunities were so surpass- ingly extended. The Sophists acquired wealth, influence, and fame, in the first place, because they taught the Greek youth those arts of rhetorical display best fitted to move a popular assembly. The inevitable result was that "to expose fallacy or inconsistency was found to be both an easier process and a more appreciable SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 39 display of ingenuity, than the discovery and es- tablishment of truth in such a way as to command assent." The old philosophy was eclipsed, like the old reverence, by the parade of a wisdom which, resting upon mere statement and backed only by skilled special pleading, recommended, itself by its simplicity of attainment. And with these displays of sophistry Socrates was con-| temporary. He thus appeared at a crisis in the history of the Greeks. Religion happened to be too ma- terialized in its origins to include moral concep- tions. Philosophy could furnish no explanation of the unity of the world. The subordination of the individual to the state had turned back the tide of Persian conquest, and each citizen, for- getful of the community, sought his share of the spoil. ^ In short, the organism of Greek society was beginning to break up; changes had long been in rapid process that could not but end in a new contrast. The individual citizen was tardily be- ginning to criticise the conditions of his citizen- ship, and so the perception that he was a man be- gan to disturb him. Socrates is the interpreter of this new and quite unfamiliar sense of in- dividuality. He is " the first of the Greeks who was not wholly Greek," because he is the earliest missionary who preached its own infinite value to the human soul. He emerged in the nick of time to find definite expression for a revo- lutionary perception that was vaguely formulating itself in the minds of his fellow-citizens. Like most prophets, he possessed a gospel, and for it met the martyr's death — wrought execution upon himself, because to have lived for his ideal fur- nished all the fulness that life could afford, to » Cf. Thucydides, iii. 82. 40 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY forego it implied a death infinitely more terrible than physical dissolution. The man, his mes- sage, and his way of proclaiming it together con- stitute Socrates' significance, not only for his contemporaries, but also for universal history, in which he stands forth one of the most notable ! and pathetic figures. ■ The life-work of Socrates was to turn investi- gation from matter to man, to deflect interest from the foreign order of outer things to the in- ner realm of regnant personality. And to ac- complish this successfully, he had to prove by his own career that the life is more than meat, the body than raiment. In an age of scepticism, he came incarnating a permanent belief in the ultimate reality of the human spirit, and justify- ing his ideal by showing in common life that richness of character is the only wealth worth winning. His biographer tells us: *' He disci- plined his mind and body by such a course of life that he who should adopt a similar one would, if no supernatural influence prevented, live in good spirits and uninterrupted health ; nor would he ever be in want of the necessary expenses for it. So frugal was he, that I do not know whether ' any one could earn so little by the labor of his hands as not to procure sufficient to have satisfied Socrates." The enthusiasm and curiosity excited by his unique figure,^ as well as the magnetic at- traction he is known to have had, point to a striking difference between him and other con- temporary teachers. In many respects he was not unlike the Sophists, and we are aware that some few classed him with them. He shared with them the independent spirit of free and fear- less inquiry, though directing it to wholly diverse ends. After their fashion, he was accustomed to iCf. Plato's Symposion, 22ib. SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 4 1 converse in market-place, gymnasia/ and at the social board, and to debate, not so much high and remote themes, as the familiar incidents of daily life. But being in his own estimation no more than a seeker after truth, he had no pupils ; he simply talked with intimates, friends, and chance acquaintances. The constructive lessons of his discussions, the simplicity of his habits, and his consistent refusal to receive hire for his services, all went to prove that he was no Sophist, but a man eager to disclose a higher interpreta- tion of life — one that could by no means be esti- mated in terms of gold and silver. For exam- ple, he enters into conversation with a typical Athenian coxcomb, by name Euthydemus. This youth "had collected many writings of the most celebrated poets and Sophists, and imagined that by this means he was outstripping his contempo- raries in accomplishments." He is an excellent representative of the current sophistic tendencies. For he had ** never learned anything of any per- son " — this was not possible if for each man, as the Sophists taught (in strange contradiction of their theory), his own opinions were final. Nev- ertheless, he is ''willing to offer such advice as may occur to him without premeditation." A little intercourse with Socrates transforms him and, presently, he is forced to declare, "I no longer put confidence in the answers which I give ; for all that I said before appears to me now to be quite different from what I then thought." Soc- rates employs the Sophists' own weapons to com- pass their defeat. Yet he does not rest satisfied with a barren victory in mere wordy warfare. This same Euthydemus constantly associates with him; and, as Xenophon tells us, "when Soc- rates saw that he was thus disposed, he no longer 1 Cf. Plato's Lysis, 2o6e. 42 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY puzzled him with questions, but explained to him, in the simplest and clearest manner, what he thought that he ought to know, and what it would be best for him to study." Thus, there was a consistent method in what must have seemed to many of his fellow-citizens Socrates' peculiari- ties. He had a purpose, and to achieve this was his mission. He drew inspiration from a life- long desire to arrive at clear notions concerning self and the meaning of man's life. He possessed the most solemn conviction, the most serious be- lief, that such conclusions were both possible and imperatively necessary. His it was to have dis- cerned the signs of the times. The indispensa- ble need for a reformation of human knowledge regarding moral and religious questions pressed upon him in some sort as upon Jesus. Yet he labored under limitations. He accepted the self- opinionated individual of the Sophists — the social atom — but he could not stop here. His it was to arouse this personage to a perception of his ob- ligations to other minds in thought, and to other persons in society. To this end, it was neces- sary to bring him to his senses so to speak, to convince him irresistibly that, at every turn, he leaned upon his fellow-men. By displaying the implications of the simplest judgments, and the most ordinary acts, Socrates proved that thought is an endowment of all men — that it is indigenous to human nature; he also indicated that the most commonplace deeds could not take place unless men were banded together in a social pact. So he brought about a reconstruction of knowledge alike in regard to thought and to virtue. A man must know the implications of living ere he can be virtuous. Or, as it is put in one of the most famous Socratic phrases, ''an unexamined life is not worth living." Knowledge of self is the SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 43 cardinal condition of bettering life, of putting a man in a position to fulfil more efficiently his duties to the state and to himself as a rational being. One cannot guess at what he is most fit- ted to do, he must know ; and to begin to know he must first arrive at a salutary conviction of his present ignorance. " For himself," as Xenophon says, **he would hold discourse from time to time, on what concerned mankind, considering . . . what was just, what unjust . . . what a state was, and what the character of a statesman ; what was the nature of government over men, and the qualities of one skilled in governing them ; and touching on other subjects, with which he thought that those zvho were acquaititcd were mefi of worth aiid estimation, but that those who were ignorant of them might justly be deemed no better than slaves.'^ Man's knowledge of his own true nature alone insures that he will put it to its proper uses in life. For all life is moral life. It originates in the individual, yet it ex- pands in him only in so far as he finds oppor- tunity of associating himself with others. The deep-seated conviction that ''virtue is knowl- edge" constitutes the kernel of the Socratic gos- pel. The " Socratic gospel," be it remembered, not "the Gospel." For Socrates was hardly more emancipated than other Greeks from the limita- tions imposed by that city-state we have tried to picture. He displayed his own discernment, and so was a creator, but he did not create out of nothing. The end whereto he lived was clear to him; the means whereby he moved toward it he had of his people and age. Accordingly, while Greek civilization dated its perception of the moral value of the individual man from him, his estimate of this worth was restricted by the defi- 44 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY nite horizon of his own experience, by the fact that he passed his life in the medium of a highly specialized society ruled by an already existing ethical standard of its own. From the very re- straints to which he found himself subject he de- rived his expansive force. Let us look at these disadvantages for a moment. To begin with, a virtue that consists in knowl- edge is plainly the luxury of a few. It was formulated after consideration of the favored Greek citizen, and was minted specially for his use. Intellectualism is its vice. The unculti- vated, the stupid, the immature, the preoccupied have no lot or part in it. Barbarians, women, children, and slaves cannot be virtuous from the nature of their situation. They do not enjoy the requisite opportunities. If ihey happen to be virtuous, it is in the midst of their ignorance, and so their very virtue comes to be a species of vice ; their lives are morally worthless, because *' unexamined." All that large class whose moral- ity is conventional, or who so far act at hap- hazard, must be ticketed bad, whatever there ex- cellencies. Calculation, proceeding from a ra- tional view of circumstances, forms the seed-plot of virtue. All that lies without its limits can produce the good only by accident. Socrates, in short, made the immortal discovery that the value of human life, by reason of its very humanity, is the motive force of ethical action. He did not see that, on this basis, every man's life is equally valuable, for, being limited by Greek traditions, he still supposed that the stature of manhood which could rise to the moral level depended on conditions altogether independent of the individ- ual. As his social materials were circumscribed, so his ideal of the possibilities of good living was cramped. He would not have been able to at- SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 45 tach any .meaning to the declaration, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repent- ance." And if he were thus restricted theoretically, he was not less bound practically. His whole career was of and for Athens. The knowledge which is virtue cannot outstrip the gifts of the gods to men. What they have bestowed must be thor- oughly sifted and searched. Accordingly, the " good " culminates in right conduct as ruled by opportunity in social life. The city state supplies the accordant conditions. The transformed character, the converted man, as the Christian terms him, could not then exist. Socrates was representative of all that to this hour remains typically valuable in Greek civilization. He was the artistic moralist, the teacher who perceived that an essential portion of moral greatness con- sists in putting out to usury the talents that man has. He makes no attempt to get away from life, like the Indian ascetic ; nor, at the other pole, does he put forth any effort to renew life — to render it subservient to a fresh and infinitely higher purpose — like an apostle. He simply in- culcates use of it in wisdom, in well weighed cir- cumspection with regard to the circumstances amid which it is obviously placed. In this he is characteristically limited, and the practical re- striction is typically Greek. The idea of sin had not then laid hold upon the conscience. Moral responsibility is not a man's obligation to his God — something infinite ; but the duty of the Greek citizen, seeing that he is such, to do his best according as the laws and the interests of his community, which is finite, may determine. Morality thus centres in knowing what life is, and in accepting its conditions as material from which an excellent result may be wrought. Cul- 46 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY ture, moral culture, must be possible for every Greek, because the opportunities are there if he will but recognize them and learn how to employ them. The Socratic teaching, therefore, partakes in the nature of art, but of an art of life. Knowl- edge, the result of instruction, is indispensable, because it keeps men from ruining excellent ma- terial through preventable ignorance. It is this linking of moral capacity with opportunity that so puzzles the Christian. Nevertheless, the free- dom of the individual to mould the formless mass of his own being — the Socratic master-thought — is that apart from which all morality whatsoever would be impossible. To enunciate this freedom was Socrates' mission ; for it he died, and in dy- ing gained immortality. For here *' he being dead yet speaketh." Conscious morality in the ancient classical world begins with him, because he is the first to substitute the authority of the individual for that of the state. In his speech before his judges, he enunciated a new principle destined to affect the old world with increasing disquiet, to trouble it by calling up endless prob- lems, and finally, to convict it of moral impo- tence. He originated a need that the resources of classical civilization could not meet. For the Christian alone can fully respond to the prophetic note struck in those words: ''I then showed, not in word only, but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing." So Socrates shifted the centre of the ancient order from external force and conformity to in- ternal consistency and truth to self. But he con- ceived that to the Greek citizen alone was it given to compass this devotion to self. The great, the rich, and the noble are called j as for SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 47 the rest, they must be regarded as morally non- existent. Yet it was a master-stroke to have dis- covered that there were moral beings, that only men could be such, and that they could achieve advance in their ethical vocation only by co- operating with one another in society. Socrates thus adumbrated the doctrine, foreordained to go on ever afterwards increasing in sway — that virtue is the one thing in this world worth get- ting, because it stands marked off from all other goods in bearing its own reward with it ; it is the one good, perfect in its self-centralization. Yet Socrates was condemned to die the death. And why? He had sinned against his age in being greater than it, in being dissatisfied with its most characteristic achievements. No crime, or shadow of crime, could be recorded against him ; nevertheless, he was thoroughly out of sympathy with the political conditions of his Athens. As Plato said, he was a gad-fly to the Athenians. For him Athens was the old imper- fect state, not the City of God that he contem- plated afar off in his moments of rarest aspiration. He plainly hinted that the good man, the type of citizen, could be produced neither by social posi- tion nor by popular election. So he opposed partisans of oligarchy and democracy alike. Only he who knows the art of ruling is fit to de- cree just judgment. Not all citizens are naturally capai3le of discharging executive functions, as the democratic party thought ; neither does this capacity accompany certain outward advantages, such as family and wealth, as the oligarchs pre- sumed. So all united in clamoring for his death. As often happens, those who stoned the prophet were really erecting an everlasting monument to him. In spiritual life, a thing " cannot be quick- ened except it die/^ And, as John Stuart Mill 48 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY says, '' Socrates was put to death, but the So- cratic philosophy rose like the sun in the heavens, and spread its illumination over the whole in- tellectual firmament." He had made a contribu- tion to man's religious, moral, and social progress that never can be lost. Once and for ever he had shown that the moral universe is of man's spirit all compact. So he protested against a rule of life drawn at haphazard from this or that set of opinions ; he urged the duty of rising to clear consciousness of one's own aptitudes; above all, he claimed for the individual a right to employ them in his own service as well as in that of the state. Thus he broke down the old Greek artistic idea.^ Life is not a limited material out of which as good a statue as possible is to be chiselled. Life, being unique in every man, the possible results are of infinite variety, — no plan can be imposed upon it for its perfecting. Each separate soul in the Greek world must needs be treated on its own merits ; and the highest illus- tration of this principal Socrates set forth in his own daily walk and conversation. He discovered himself, and in the light of this revelation set about arranging his relations to his fellow-men. So he liberated a principle entirely foreign to, and destructive of, the conventional presupposi- tions of the traditional Hellenic moralists, or rather politicians. Hence his peculiarly personal contribution. More of a saint than a thinker, he lived his own solution of his own problem, walk- ing darkly amid the shades wherewith the crystal- lized civilization of his day surrounded him. More of a prophet than a philosopher, he per- ceived that the end was not yet, he knew that it J Cf. Aristotle's Ethics, iii. 14 (1119 a ii) ; Plato's R(^ public y iii, 401. SOCRATES AS A MISSIONARY 49 was not his to utter the whole burden of his message. He comprehended **the absolute ne- cessity for a further illumination," and even ven- tured '*in express words to prophesy the future advent of some heaven-sent guide." Yet he knew not the things whereof he spoke. The divine purpose in creation had to labor yet awhile in sore travail of the human spirit ere the deliverer could come. So he ** died in the faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and confessed " that he was a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. He desired a " better country, that is an heavenly ; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called " his God ; for he hath prepared for him a city. Thus Socrates takes his place among the indispensable heralds of the Gospel, and we are his heirs. He was a chief among that mighty company who, " having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promises ; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." So his career was not lost, but passed as an integral element into that corporate immortality wherein all the martyrs, saints, and prophets of human aspiration are most truly partakers. CHAPTER III GREEK SELF-CRITICISM " None of them was left alone to live as he chose ; but pass- ing their time in the city . . . their avocations ordered vi^ith a view to the public good, they regarded them- selves as belonging, not to themselves, but to their country." To preserve the subtle aroma of Greek civiliza- tion no common means sufficed. Where reli- gious, civic, and artistic life commingled so finely, the ordinary methods of abstract thinking could not but result in a more or less distorted and in- adequate reproduction. As usually happens, the moment gave birth to the man. Plato was phi- losopher, poet, and citizen in a single personality; and by his rich imagination, no less than by his rare insight and manifold civic associations, he so reacted upon Hellenic culture as to embody its distinctive traits in a final transcript, enhanc- ing the while its most essential principles. De- tail for its own sake disappeared in his atmos- pheric halo, the entire impression remained so heightened as to be unmistakable and completely expressive. Unsystematized his thinking may be, effective in offering a consistent result it un- doubtedly is and always must remain. With Aristotle, on the other hand, analysis crept in, and, in a ''plain historical way," the elements incident to the Greek universe unfolded them- selves with that clearness invariably more or less incident to the review seriatim. In the Platonic writings the Greek man revealed himself, show- 5° GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 5 I ing forth the subtle influences that lost their in- tellectual separateness and found their full reali- zation in his culture ; in the Aristotelian books the Greek thinker reported all this life had to tell of man, of society, of the physical world. The two are thus complementary, and yet both are philosophers. They execute their work under conditions that do not differ entirely. His lines having been cast in a sceptical age, and his destined function being the foundation of moral philosophy, Socrates cannot be summed up in a single phrase. An evasive twofold move- ment marked his thought. He was a Sophist in so far as he consciously tried to turn attention from the dogmas of the older physicists to the important issues centering more immediately in human life. With him man claims imperatively the importance once thrust upon nature ; and like other moralists, he finds the best exemplifica- tion of his contention, not in a vague, abstract humanity, but in the fulness of individual char- acter. In this he apparently approaches the con- clusion of the great Sophist, Protagoras : "Man is the measure of all things; of what is that it is; of what is not that it is not." Yet, for the most part, he escapes the dangers of individual- ism. For although primarily a moralist, he is never content with the citizen in isolation — a contradiction, not merely in terms, but also in fact. Here his large sympathy, a main element in the secret of his power, comes to the rescue and preserves the balance. A moralist, Socrates is, although to some extent unconsciously, an Athenian also. Man achieves no vocation as a measure unless there be objects of measurement. In other words, although each may have a life to live, if not a soul to save, Socrates knew that a human career bears certain limitations with it 52 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY which, indeed, constitute the very possibility of its success. No Greek of the classical period laid such firm hold upon the truth of the impor- tance of individual worth ; many Greeks knew the correlative truth of social opportunity as fully; and two reviewed it with far more per- suasive effect. So, for the generations who came immediately after Socrates' death, the semi-scep- ticism, semi-individualism of his teaching sink into the background, while his shadowy concep- tion of a socialized reason pushes its way to the front, receiving apotheosis from Plato, explana- tion from Aristotle. Or, to express the develop- ment with special reference to our present in- quiry, attention reverts, for a time, from evolution of the sense of individuality to the accomplished facts of social organization. But although the past seems thus to be reinstated for a moment at the expense of the pregnant movements of the pres- ent, there are compensations and to spare. The Greek ideal had been actually realized, in so far as any ideal ever can be; it remained to body it forth clearly and in completeness by means of philosophical thought, as all operative ideals come to be preserved sooner or later for the ben- efit of posterity. Plato and Aristotle sounded the heights and depths of Hellenic civilization as a whole ; from the same mouths proceeded at once justification and judgment. When we speak of Socrates, we ever hold the man, the distinctive personality, in the mind's eye. When Plato and Aristotle are mentioned, the author or thinker is the uppermost idea ; the man tends to recede and to be cast into shadow by the writings. Interest centres in what Socra- tes did, in what Plato and Aristotle wrote, thought, systematized. The popular instinct shows a true intuition in enforcing this contrast. GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 53 For Socrates fills his place on the world's great stage in virtue of his life and practical teaching ; his chief pupils by their reasoned representation of this same life. Hence their vastly deeper sig- nificance as Greeks, his incomparably more fasci- nating interest as a human being. Plato and Aristotle found conscious expression for ideals that had long been moulding the conduct of men who were unconscious of their inner import. Thousands upon thousands of Greeks, dead and gone, had spent themselves for the ''Justice" of the Republic^ or had fashioned their behavior as if in full view of the " Magnanimous Man " limned in the Ethics. Warriors and statesmen, sailors and artists, laborers, women and little children, had poured their all — their life — into the seething society of the city-state. Although they knew not what they did, their united sacri- fice had blossomed into the unparalleled achieve- ments of sculptors, dramatists, rulers, orators, and historians, who were more conscious of the hidden springs of unity only because their sacri- fice happened to be fraught with larger opportu- nities, and their highest selfhood was wrought out in a career that depended with fuller com- pleteness on the whole body politic. But they too, like their nameless and forgotten brethren, knew disappointment, defeat, and death. All that they had hoped for did not come to pass, yet their balked aspiration, just in so far as it was balked, transmitted itself to posterity, there to be transformed from the prophecy of aspira- tion into the fulfilment of fact, or to act as the seed-plot of a still more momentous future. Ig- norance, suffering, failure met justification, con- secration, and success in the mighty age of Per- icles. Then for a brief space the cruelly muti- lated dreams of a race came to their kingdom in 54 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY a world that now seems to us to partake in this very dream-nature. Or, once more, at a later day, the Greek went forth to civilize the Roman Empire, sure of success in the riches of his in- heritance. What were these mystic, eager am- bitions? What justification can be read out of their results? Above all, how preserve their consequences fresh ; how stay the hand of time's decay from their magnificent accomplishment? Plato and Aristotle came to answer these ques* tions. The former, affection bathing his fine spirit, caught the very life of his country and kept it alive for our instruction, enabling us to see, even in these last days, that in its very being its complete justification lay enshrined. The lat- ter, prompted partly by curiosi.ty and partly by the rapid change of circumstances, displayed its permanent lesson, looking rather to this and that aspect of its varied manifestation than to the en- tire life itself. Plato incarnated the stages of the Hellenic story over again, and gathered up its timeless teaching in one great book. Aristotle, keeping his eye on an object more than on a pul- sating organism, drew the numerous inferences it suggested, now in this aspect, now in that, and explained the laws that it seemed to illustrate. In short, all the strength and all the weakness of Hellenic culture were brought to clear con- sciousness by the united efforts of the two mas- ters ; and in their works the assembled charac- teristics remain for the instruction and warning of humanity. In its two permanently significant thinkers the Hellenic spirit gathers itself together, so to speak, and applies its assembled resources to the fundamental problems of the nature of the universe and of man's being. Socrates* sug- gestion, that *'an unexamined life is not worth GREEK SELF-CRITICISM $^ living," reappears broadened and deepened. For the life of society, critically scrutinized from every side, has been substituted for the neces- sarily restricted interests of the single person- ality ; the individual must needs display himself in the light shed by the community. Plato tries to fathom the connection between the thing and the thinker ; to show how the various elements in experience — thought, sensation, passion, and the like — interact ; to set forth man's necessarily moral nature as it stands revealed in his indis- pensable relation to the political organization. Speaking generally, he fails, or rather does not attempt, to separate these inquiries, mainly be- cause the organic idea of the state had laid strong and, in a way, vivifying hold upon him. The Republic y his chief constructive work, is a treatise on everything — a metaphysic, psychology, sociol- ogy, a philosophy of religion, of education, of art. This, indeed, accounts at once for its un- dying interest and for its sometimes disappoint- ing limitations. Aristotle, on the contrary, separated all these quests, systematized some, in- vented a precise scientific language for their due discussion, sought to discover and apply princi- ples in each restricted sphere. Yet he and his master alike embody the complete awakening of the Greek spirit — first aroused in Socrates — from its long satisfaction with half-truths. The fact that there are two worlds — a mental and a material, an ideal and a physical, one of reason and one of passion, a moral and a political — is now fully perceived, and the magnitude of the resultant problems permits of no easy or off- hand solution. Thus, so far as concerns our present task, the service of Plato and Aristotle was to state fully, and with unmistakable deci- sion, the deepest question that humanity is con- 56 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY tiniially called upon to face from age to age; they realized the tremendous antagonisms whereof thought and action are equally so prolific. There are two worlds. Are they utterly foreign to each other ? Or can we by searching find out God — that principle of unity which, manifested similarly in both, proves their ultimate and un- alterable harmony ? The limitations here imposed upon us plainly rule out anything in the nature of a competent review of extended systems devoted to topics so high and intricate. It must be sufficient for us to suppress processes and to rest content with concentrating attention upon results. Two lead- ing consequences ought to be kept conspicuously in sight. Both masters tend to fall into what is termed abstractness — that is to say, their effort to view life and the universe as a whole, whether from the ethical or the metaphysical standpoint, stops short of completeness. With them, as always, searching does not find out God, because, for Plato, the social unity tends to swamp the in- dividual's distinctive characteristics ; for Aris- totle, an intellectual life, that seems to sit loosely to the world of reality, constitutes the highest idea. In a word, antagonisms are found to be suppressed rather than overcome, and so right- eousness never flows down the streets like a river, nor is God very near to each one of us. In the very explanation of differences seeds of new problems lie hidden, destined to burst forth at no distant date. Paradoxically, Greek self- criticism ends in a reconstruction which is at once permanently instructive and fundamentally imperfect, simply because the criticism happened to be Greek and Greek only. For our present purpose, it must suffice to consider these two con- trasted sides. GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 57 Regarded in its organic relation to the Prepa- ration for Christianity, the interest of Hellenic civilization, whether within Greece itself or in the wider areas of the Macedonian and Roman Empires, naturally converges upon the gradual awakening of a sense of the value of human personality and its implications. The story of this growth dates from Socrates, as we have seen. Immediately after his death, what are known as the Minor Socratic Schools appeared, and set forth an account of life which dealt specifically with man the individual. According to the Cyrenaics, a man is to live for pleasure ; accord- ing to the Megarians, for intellectual attainment ; according to the Cynics, for liberty from social conventions. But, as has also been shown, the events of Greek national history forced the social problem upon Plato and Aristotle and led them to dismiss the individual for a little, or at least to minimize his importance, except in relation to the society of which he was a mem- ber. While, then, these thinkers may be said to call a halt in the onward course of development, for this very reason they contrive to convey last- ing lessons — first, because they sum up the total contribution of Hellenic genius ; second, because they adopt a standpoint supposed to be peculiarly modern. Recognition of the law that a human being is his brother's keeper, with its attendant gospel of "ethical culture," is conceived by many to-day to be a main discovery of the nine- teenth century spirit. Accordingly, we find that Plato and Aristotle often speak in strangely familiar tones. In some respects, their outlook happens to be not unlike our own. At the same time, they afford us the sole opportunity of esti- mating at once the strength and the weaknesses of the social idea as it was then conceived — char- 58 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY acteristics which, in their defects at all events, profoundly influenced the ancient world in its slow awakening to consciousness of those neces- sities which Christianity alone could supply. The constructive vigor, like the perennial at- tractiveness and importance of Plato and Aris- totle, flows from their attempt to present the unity of the material world and the solidarity of Greek manhood. Their effort was to arrive at principles capable of explaining the differences and antagonisms whereof nature and society are so prolific. In other words, they are permanently significant because they first rise to the true philosophical standpoint, the standpoint which, alike in the sciences, in sociology, and in specu- lative thinking proper, marks the best modern thought. The lasting value and import of such an outlook upon the deeper things of life lies in its distinctively constructive character. And al- though, as was natural, Plato and Aristotle abound in criticism, especially of their predecessors, in what follows we must suppress this aspect of their thought so as to concentrate upon the permanent rather than the transitory. The mission of a great thinker usually proves to be twofold. He sums up the essential ele- ments incident to the past and the present of the civilization he represents ; and from the fresh height thus attained he issues direction for the future. His aim commonly is to conserve what he deems best, and, with this in remembrance, to point out what ought to be eliminated if cer- tain attendant abuses are to be mitigated or wholly removed. Plato and Aristotle perform these offices perfectly for their own day and gen- eration. With the one, a profound sense of the necessity for social reconstruction predominates ; with the other, a perception of the need for es- GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 59 caping unfavorable contemporary conditions be- gins to reveal itself. The construction of a new state wherein all the imperfections incident to the Athenian democracy would be removed, wherein the vicious extremes developed by the Greek citizen would be suppressed, forms the central point of interest. Complete provision is to be made for the education of man — and edu- cation is a political matter, it implies contact with others — so that he may be skilled to discern what is of civic importance, or be schooled to rise superior to the rashness, grossness, or vain display which, as experience had shown, entrap the ill-trained. Formally, this view possesses the greatest merit. But its success depends upon the kind of society which bestows the education, and upon the kind of aim contemplated. Of a truth, man is not a worthy specimen of humanity till he has been so educated as to be fit to fill a place in the social organism — till, thanks to his train- ing, he has attained a clear ideal to which his life may be worthily consecrated. When the pic- ture is filled in, we find that the state is to be served by the practice of four cardinal virtues — Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and Justice — and by a carefully cultivated perception of the reasons why they are indispensable. Society re- poses upon Justice, but not in our sense of this term. Justice turns out to be a principle rather than a virtue. It pervades the body politic when every citizen finds himself occupying the position for which his capacity fits him, and without com- plaint remains constant in the sphere whereto he has thus been relegated. Further, the state is to be the sole judge both of this capacity and of the situation it necessarily entails. The dangers which threatened the very existence of the Greek politeia—iht heedlessness 6o PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY of the people, their attention to the rhetoric of mere incompetent charlatans, their readiness to receive and to give unworthy flattery — had come to be sufficiently obvious to the reflective. And it was Plato's intense desire to save the state first, because only through its preservation could the regeneration of the individual be accomplished. In his view, the citizen possessed a single right — that of filling the position for which nature had fitted him; and the state, for its own continued existence, must so arrange that every one should occupy his own predestined niche. The one lives and moves and has his being in the many. Plato recognizes, once for all, that society is an organized system, and he sees too that, like all systems, it must be viewed in the light of the specific ends which it subserves. His strength depends upon this perception ; his weakness lies in the limitations he deemed it requisite to im- pose. The kind of state constitutes his ideal ; with Aristotle, on the other hand, the kind of life to be attained by the best forms the be-all and end-all of moral theory. Both agree that, by thinking, God — the harmonious unity of life and things — can be discovered. The one turns his thought upon an ideal community wherein phi- losophers will be kings; the other upon an ideal career of contemplation which the temper of civ- ilization as a whole will render possible. For this reason both are at once final and yet repre- sentative of a transition. They are final in that their abstract thinking is constantly dominated by practical purposes and, in part, their interpreta- tion of the practical cannot be improved upon. The social character of their speculation and its outcome on the formal side must always remain guides for mankind. Even Christianity has come to express its moral teaching in the forms em- GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 6 1 ployed by them. Upon this social characteristic we have already insisted ; its formal perfection may now engage our attention for a little. ''Every form of virtue arises from the effort of the individual to satisfy himself with some good conceived as true or permanent, and it is only as common to himself with a society that the individual can so conceive of a good." The lasting influence of the Platonic and Aristotelian teaching is to be sought in its ceaseless inculca- tion of this fact. As Aristotle put it, " Virtue is a power of working beneficently." Every human being possesses such a power, not for himself alone, but rather in and for the society to which he belongs. The social medium affords him the opportunities requisite to his development of him- self. Regarded thus, the lessons conveyed by the great Greeks are eternal. Virtue cannot be conceived of, much less practically realized, un- der any other conditions. The kind of society involved, like the nature of the moral end sought, may be imperfect. The fact that morality is other-regarding as well as self-regarding, that it is impossible except in and through a society, must ever remain a fundamental truth. It is the lasting achievement of the Athenian thinkers to have been the first to comprehend that a well- ordered community is both the beginning and the end of ethical progress. Without it moral situations cannot come into being, and, in its fundamental evolution, it is itself an ever pro- gressing revelation of this very morality. Thus, so far as formal statement goes, even we Christians cannot travel beyond Aristotle's deliverance : — " The single virtue of practical wisdom implies the presence of all the moral virtues; " nor be- yond Plato's, less specific though it be : — ** And in truth, said I, I think, looking as it were from 62 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY a watch-tower, since we have reached this point in our story, that there is one form of virtue and endless kinds of vice." Plato's teaching stands good for all time, because he recognized the originating source of virtue — interest in a social- ized good. Aristotle, too, is enrolled among the permanent benefactors of man, because he saw the real end for which all morality makes — in- terest in the good for its own sake. Undeveloped the social conception was, imperfect the idea of the moral goal, but the shape taken by the com- mon teaching is that within which all moral in- sight must ever fall. The bettering of life through the intercourse between men, who seek good for its own sake, implies at once individuals and communities — that is, takes up into itself all the resources at command. For the life that is thus enriched is not merely yours, mine, but also that of the neighbors among whom we move. Plato and Aristotle must be counted among the im- mortal guides of humanity, because they incul- cate pursuit of good for the sake of good, and because they know that such pursuit is impossible without social conditions, without a stimulating sense of debt to the society that affords the op- portunities for well-doing. Their ''thought is in a sense ever young," for they tell us that "the moral is the criterion of the supernatural." Only as God reveals Himself in many ways do we find the fit occasions to reveal ourselves in the one manner sufficient for us — devotion to duty and goodness according to our appointed circum- stances. Yet while the form of the Greek teaching was final, its matter was but temporary. As is always the case, the society whence Plato and Aristotle drew their materials was marked by the defects of its excellencies. These are of the last impor- GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 63 tance for our present inquiry, because gradual realization of them by the men of the ancient world produced that feeling of helplessness which so powerfully assisted to spread Christianity and to deepen conviction of its fundamental truth. They may be very briefly summarized as fol- lows : — (i) In the first place, the Greek conscience was characterized by an elasticity that seems strangely in contradiction with the formal perfec- tion attained by the typical thinkers. This was largely traceable to the influence exerted by the analogy from art, already adverted to, and by the presence of a slave class. Sane use of life, especially in avoidance of all disturbing ex- tremes, was a noticeable feature of Hellenic genius. The materials supplied by human nature and by society were regarded as so much " stuff," to be moulded into a harmonious whole by the moral artist. Naturally, then, many things were permitted which we should eschew, or deem inappropriate, such, for example, as regulated indulgence in what Christians would term sensual pleasures. This was inevitable in a social state where women were supposed to be without rights, to stand on much the same level as children or slaves or animals. As naturally, too, some enthusiasms, from which much that is good in Christian civilization flows, either were tabooed or had not yet gained recognition. Much that we associate with the nature of reli- gion, for instance, either did not exist or seemed to imply excesses inconsistent with the happy medium of moral excellence. The " well-con- sidered practice of the good," simply on account of this "consideration," circumscribed the sphere supposed to be coextensive with the possi- bilities of goodness. 64 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY (2) As a consequence of this, the Greek moral universe was distinctly straitened. Such virtues as temperance and self-denial which, with the truly upright modern man, overflow all life, were viewed as specially germane only to desires con- nected with satisfaction of bodily appetites and as dependent on circumstances. Typical of this is the Socratic idea that fornication is better than adultery, because likely to be less disturbing in its results. The Greek simply feared inartistic excess if certain appetites — say hunger, thirst, and sex — were too freely gratified, where we ab- hor the very suggestion of any license. Where the Christian regards indulgence as bad in itself, the Greek viewed it as unfitting a citizen for the performance of certain offices. If intemperance break in upon the rights of others, it ought to be checked ; but where, as in the case of women and slaves, others possess no rights, the sphere in which a certain artistic freedom might be allowed inevitably came to be somewhat elastic. Indul- gence is not evil in itself, but rather as it mili- tates specifically against the preservation of that measure or balance on which the well-regulated life depends. Otherwise, it may very possibly be harmless, and, therefore, quite permissible. (3) A third defect of the Platonic and Aristo- telian view was its tendency to intellectualism. Virtue reposes so much upon knowledge that it always remains a good open to the few only. A man must know how moral attainment is condi- tioned by sensual and social restrictions and by the material circumstances peculiar to the consti- tution of the universe. A certain contemplation, implying a certain trained capacity for reflection, is requisite for a man's moralization. Accord- ingly, virtue turns out to be aristocratic, but few can enjoy it in fulness. In these circumstances, GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 65 the intellectual perception on which morality re- poses may bring with it the conviction that, after all, so few can be good that goodness may not greatly flourish here below. Aristotle's ideal man remains an ideal ; the pattern of Plato's ideal state is laid up in the heavens. So a species of hopelessness, which was to reappear later with such momentous consequences, may be traced even in Plato, the most idealistic of Greek think- ers. "Evils, Theodorus, can never perish ; for there must always remain something which is an- tagonistic to good. Of necessity they hover round this mortal sphere and the earthly nature^ having no place among the gods in heaven. Wherefore, also, we ought to fly away thither, and to fly away thither is to become like God, aar far as this is possible ; and to become like him is to become holy and just and wise." This sense of hopelessness gradually emerged from a system that treated the great mass of the people as in- capable of moral culture, and consequently tended to teach those who could attain it to deem ideals difficult of attainment amid abounding de- fects. Ethical culture that depends upon intel- lect cannot but be confined to a privileged caste ; and, if morality be social, this caste, being but a drop in the bucket, is apt to find efl'ort after ex- cellence too high for it, or productive of little practical effect in the entire life wherein perforce it shares. (4) Again, the Greek theory is for the most part socialistic. It leaves little room for individ- ual initiative. The moral consequences of this are obvious. If, in the state, every man is to be legislatively relegated to his place, some of his possibilities are sure to be neglected. A muti- lated man can be the only result of a society in which property is abolished ; in which the sweet 66 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY relations of the family are eliminated ; in which no field is left open wherein one may execute judgment as to his capacity for serving others along with himself. Plato committed himself to an unselfishness that was of no avail, because its sphere of action had been blotted out. He fell into the very old, and still somewhat common, fallacy of seeking to create the spiritual out of the unspiritual. In order to induce men to live the best life, he completely deprived them of the very reasons why they should seek to continue to live at all. In fact, the socialistic element in the Greek ethical scheme so operated as to lead to a paradoxical conclusion. Morality was to be the consequence of an organized system of immoral- ity. The plan of forcing men to rise superior to personal interests by depriving them of all inter- ests whatsoever — a mark of every socialistic arrangement — is absurd, mainly because, thus limited, man falls below the level of individual- ity, — the conditions out of which moral life can grow are improved out of existence. (5) Finally, there is an aspect of it in which Greek morality centres in the principle of self- love. For this the identification of the ethical with the aesthetic standpoint must be held re- sponsible. ''Virtue," Plato teaches, " will be a kind of health and beauty and good habit of the soul ; and vice will be a disease and deformity and sickness of it." Even more explicitly Aris- totle reasons from the artistic analogy. A good man "will be eager in a moderate and right spirit for all such things as are pleasant and at the same time conducive to health or to a sound bodily condition, and for all other pleasures, so long as they are not prejudicial to these, or in- consistent with noble conduct, or extravagant be- yond his means. For unless a person limits him- GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 6^ self in this way, he affects such pleasures more than is right, whereas the temperate man foUuws the guidance of right reason." Or, as Plato puts it, revealing the inner principle, "The virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way, comes to them not by chance, but as tlie result of the order and truth and art which are im- parted to them." The self constitutes the central interest ; it is filled with material out of which a good statue may be chiselled ethically; to know how to do this is the starting-point of all moral advance. The self that continues ignorant in this matter cannot be regarded as morally estimable; it may be disregarded. Here we have an instance of the error which Philo noted so exactly under the influence of the different temper of the first Christian century. *'Man," he says, " should not regard the world as an ap- pendage to himself, but himself as an appendage to the world," This self, which treats the world as its property, is the power that separates be- tween God and mankind, between man and man. And implicitly it played a great part in Greek teaching, more especially as it was embodied in the moral precepts of Aristotle. To sum up. The very strength of Hellenic culture was the prime source of its defects. Civilization as a whole is so complex that one finds it hard either to analyze it into its elements or to describe it. Its significance lies, not so much here or there, but rather in the definite judgment that at such and such periods it tends to an obvious goal. Regarded thus, the culture of Greece is, if not the most significant phase in the evolution of civilization, at all events one of the most significant. This constitutes its per- manent strength. For what we have to weigh is, 68 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY not the advance of humanity as a whole, but the point reached by it in a given community. The perfection of Greek society, then, lay in the cir- cumstance that it realized a state of civilization such as had never been reached before. As a progressive stage in the development of mankind it was characterized by affinity for the ideal and good, rather than by attraction for the bad and backsliding. This attribute revealed itself in the freeborn citizen principally. Culture for one class in the state, from its very partiality, at- tained an unprecedented measure of excellence. Still, it was for the few only. The organism starved while the member waxed. Then the in- evitable reaction set in, and all were involved in a common sickness. The citizens, strong at first and devoted to the realization of their ideals, in the end became affected by effeminacy, by light- headedness, by immorality, all of them incident to excessive culture and to contempt for toil. Finally, they were enslaved by a foreign power, and even that which they had was taken from them. But their travail had not been in vain. For their social traditions remained enshrined in lofty writings which embodied the type of higher manhood that it had been the mission of their community to develop. The fall of the Hellenic state was due to its inherent weakness ; but this very weakness was incidental to its excellence. The achievement of Greek civilization was splendid, because it was for the few. It was the work of the slave that furnished the citizens with their unparalleled opportunities for self-improve- ment. They so far actualized their ideal of life ; but this stood for their elevation or enjoyment, not for that of all men. They thus attained a level which, in its way, is without equal ; but the GREEK SELF-CRITICISM 69 way is not entirely good, and so the institutions born of it had to give place to others. Yet in one aspect of it the Greek conception of the good is final. Early society always associated the good and the good life with the acquisition of worldly rewards. Not till the time of Plato and Aristotle did a higher conception become prevalent. They tell us that the good life is not that in which virtue is reduced to the level of a means to personal ease, but is rather that process of development of character in which the virtues are considered ends in themselves. ** Once for all they conceived and expressed the conception of a free or pure morality as resting on what we may venture to call a disinterested interest in the good." Or, to put it otherwise, the moral theory of Plato and Aristotle is final, in that the moral life was to them, not a career of pleasure, of search for external things, but, on the contrary, one in which the exercise of the virtues them- selves is the true aim. But while their concep- tion of the moral life is thus perfect, their notion of the good man is not. They failed to fill out the ideal they had created. They finished the work given them to do when they created the ideal — the life of morality for the sake of morality. But the morality itself that they had in mind was relative to the time in which they lived. Their good man, naturally, was Greek through and through. With him self-sacrifice is fortitude. To die for a barbarian or a slave would, in his eyes, have been a contravention of propriety. To die for his state was, with the Spartan, his chiefest glory. Thus the Greek conception of the highest life may be said to have fallen short, practically, of its theoretical perfec- tion. Society was an organism existing for the benefit of Greek citizens; all others were ex- 70 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY eluded from its privileges, or enjoyed them in but small part. And so the civilization passed away, because the universal idea which it contained in- evitably ruptured the form into which it was in- troduced. It needed a cosmopolitan spirit, not a national one, and a religious fervor, not an intel- lectual curiosity, ere mankind could, as matter of fact, come into line with the eternal conception , promulgated by the Athenian sages. CHAPTER IV SALVATION LY WISDOM ** Greeks seek after wisdom." — i Cor. i. 22. On a survey of their history as a whole, it be- comes evident that, under Providence, the Greeks fulfilled a twofold office in the Prepara- tion for Christianity. In the period of their prime they built up a unique organization, so limited in size and yet so highly specialized that the object-lesson it affords of the influence wrought by all-pervading purposes still remains, not merely the most startling on record, but also the most easily read. There is nothing in all history so absolutely unmistakable. But this glorious age was doomed to pass away, and with its disappear- ance one office of the Greeks became matter of tradition. The vocation of citizenship describes this period appropriately. Two writers, one in- timate with the actual circumstances, the other viewing them from a distance, have summed it up. The latter, Plutarch, tells us in his Life of Theseus, ''Now after the death of his father ^geus, forming in his mind a great and wonder- ful design, Theseus gathered together all the in- habitants of Attica into one town, and made them one people of one city, whereas before they lived dispersed, and were not easy to assemble upon any affair for the common interest. . . . He dissolved all the distinct state-houses, council- halls, and magistracies, and built one common State-house and council-hall on the site of the 71 72 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY present upper town, and gave the name of Athens to the whole state, ordaining a common feast and sacrifice which he called Panathanaea, or the sacrifice of all the united Athenians." Plato, on the other hand, brings out the principle of unity that formed the central life of this association. ' " What at the commencement we laid down as a universal rule of action when we were founding our state, this, if I mistake not, or some modifi- cation of it, is justice. I think we affirmed, if you recollect, and frequently repeated, that every tfidividual ought to have some one occupation i?i the state, which should be that to which his natural capacity was best adapted. . . . That fourth principle in every child aiid woman, in every slave, freej?ian, and artisan, in the rider, and in the subject, requiring each to do his own work, and not meddle with many things y In an organized society of the kind here sketched each citizen paid dearly for his privileges according to modern judgment. As a man he counted for lit- tle ; his glory, like his opportunity, lay in his membership of the state, and in return for this he unconsciously gave his whole career. Uncon- sciously be it said, because the Greek was un- aware how he spent himself for his city ; it suf- ficed him, and no sense of loss pressed upon his soul till the unique circumstances that provided him with all things began to crumble away. This degeneration was due partly to internal, partly to external, causes. Athens' sudden rise to power after she had stemmed the awful tide of Persian invasion intoxicated her people. Stran- gers abounded within her gates, and her old vir- tue failed to inoculate the new stock. The con- queror of Xerxes had been succeeded by ''a loafer in the market-place and on the hill of As- sembly, averse equally to personal service and to SALVATION BY WISDOM 73 direct taxation for the weal of his city, who was little better than an out-pauper with his constant cry, panem et circenses, having replaced the un- reasoned belief of his forefathers that the indi- vidual exists for the state, by a reasoned convic- tion that the state exists to support and amuse the individual. That his city should have a circle of tributary dependencies whose contribu- tions should pay for mercenaries to fight and row in his stead, for ships to secure his corn-supply, and for free shows in his theatre and his stadium, was a consummation which he contented himself with desiring devoutly. He would neither fight nor pay for its accomplishment, and with his idle criticism, his spoiled temper, his love of litiga- tion, and his ceaseless talk, he so hampered his own executive that it could carry out no imperial policy, and the few men of action left in the city hastened to reside beyond his reach." Pride — a major vice with the Greek moralists — laid hold upon Athens, frivolity and lack of restraint ac- companied it, and resentment was thus rapidly fomented among allied and rival states. Inter- nal jealousies between the various cities, always smouldering, now became obtrusive, and inter- necine strife burst forth. Finally, exhausted, impoverished, and degenerate Hellas fell an easy prey to foreign conquest. By Aristotle's time, Philip and Alexander had accomplished their work, free Greece had been swallowed up by the Macedonian empire. Shorn of their old self-government, the free cities dwindled precisely where dwindling is most disastrous — they failed to furnish any longer those sufficing opportunities for exercise of civic vocation which had rendered generations of Greeks content with a circumscribed life, simply because its limitations never struck them. But 74 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY roused now to clear consciousness by a long series of crushing blows, stripped of nigh all that had rendered life precious and honorable, they entered upon a new career, one altogether diverse from the first, one immeasurably less picturesque and striking, though destined for a period to ex- ercise widespread influence. Deprived of his city, the Greek went forth to hellenize the known universe and, partly unconscious of this task, to discover a new mission for himself. With tradi- tional opportunities swept away or sadly attenu- ated, the question came to be. What is the use of life? Moreover, this fresh problem was not of social interest ; each individual apart must needs solve it for himself. Thus the second main office of the Greeks was to develop the perception of personality, and to compass, with such aid as human reason afforded, a scheme for the worth- iest conduct of life. In this search, and as if by the way, he gave laws to his conquerors. The tale of this period is the narrative of an attempt at salvation by wisdom. And as the plan was foredoomed to failure, the story is also one of a gradual exhaustion of the sources whence man could, by his own faculty, extract self-satisfac- tion, or acquire insight into the ultimate import of life and the universe. Disinherited, and thrown into the seething maelstrom of a mighty empire, man, not now as a Greek citizen, but as a human being, found him- self face to face with the perennial problems sur- rounding the meaning of this mysterious world. Without the supports afforded by a career clearly mapped out in a well-defined social medium, these questions became, not merely more pressing, but of immediate moment to every reflective person. The overwhelming difficulty connected itself with the ordering of the soul — it no longer stood SALVATION BY WISDOM 75 related to the constitution of the city. Citizen- ship in the old sense, implying that every free- man was a judge in matters of high policy, had degenerated into provincial municipalism ; the counting of bricks, the weighing of mortar, the provision of sites for self-advertising monuments had displaced momentous constitutional issues and far-reaching decisions on foreign policy. In these circumstances, it was a clamant question, How is a man to live so as to safeguard his own well-being? How can he most profitably hus- band and employ his own resources, seeing that all others are gone? The post- Aristotelian Schools, as they are usually termed, arose to make reply. The urgency of the new need is enforced and illustrated by the wonderful unanimity that marked these schools, despite the extraordinary fierceness that sometimes accompanied their mu- tual polemics. Whether the competing philo- sophical sects were aware of it or not, they proved themselves subservient to a common aim. Be they Epicureans or Stoics or Sceptics, all are intensely — sometimes pathetically — desirous of formulating a scheme of life, of providing the individual man with such a sketch plan of con- duct that, by due observance of its provisions, he may make the best, not now of citizenship, but of himself. All evince profound anxiety to place tlie most worthy career within reach of everybody. Widely as they may differ in respect of the means to be employed, the end sought was invariably identical. Furthermore, as time passed and evils became still rifer, one can trace a distinct tendency towards minimizing differ- ences, and towards concentrating available sug- gestions upon the desired result. The truth that, above all things, men must be armed to free 76 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY themselves from the wearinesses that flesh entails, gradually outweighs assorted fictions concerning the method whereby this consummation is to be gained. As men realize that they are less and less citizens, they come to know that they are more and more human beings. And for each soul the question of last importance is, How am I to live, how prepare to die? Accordingly, "Individualism in ethics, subordination of all science to an ethical end, and materialistic real- ism are common" equally to Epicurean and Stoic. The Sceptics, too, no matter how they may criticise and deride the positive teaching of the rest, are at one with them in their individu- alism. The fact of personal consciousness, of personal existence, of individuality, is the one prominent feature tliat even the most consistent doubter cannot explain away. Finally, and in further proof of substantial unanimity, the watch- words of all the philosophical sects possess per- manent value, not so much because they happen to be partly true, but rather because they bear practically the same relation to the life of the time. All are striving to set up landmarks and to furnish direction suitable to a condition of affairs for which, as was inevitable, the great sys- tematic thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, had appar- ently furnished no guidance. Seeing, then, that the once state had disap- peared. Epicureanism and Stoicism agreed that a basis of life was to be sought, not in political, but in natural law. Man, the individual, had a natural right — a right amounting almost to an in- junction — to fight for his own hand. And by an easy association of ideas, it was conceived that he must attempt to obtain something tangible for himself; therefore a materialistic doctrine of the external world was adopted. The natural man SALVATION BY WISDOM 77 perceives no more than the natural. He who cannot look beyond himself seeks his self-devel- opment in something definitely his own. But if materialism thus be the basis of this individual- istic ethical theory, it is plain that the term *' natural," on which it rests, may be capable of very varied interpretation in its application to humanity. This fact gave rise to the wide dis- crepancies between the two schools to which we now turn. Our common use of the word " epicurean " leads us to associate the system of Epicurus with doctrines that do not fairly represent it. We suppose that this school consisted of sensualists who lived to gratify their own tastes ; and we often confound Epicureanism with a theory of the means best calculated to subserve such grati- fication. But if the circumstances in which this system arose be examined, it will soon appear that an interpretation of the kind is neither just nor accurate. The outcry on all sides, amid the falling away of the Greek state and culture, was, Who will show us any good ? To the precise nature of this desired good the Epicurean thinkers turned their attention. They held that it must be pleasure. At the same time, they were not such greenhorns as to identify pleasure with grossness. ''The aim and end of all action," Epicurus himself taught, " is that we may neither suffer nor fear; when once this end is realized, all the tempest of the soul subsides, for animal nature has then no need to satisfy, nothing is wanting to the full completion of good, whether of body or soul. For we want pleasure when we feel pain at its absence ; when we feel no pain, we want no pleasure. It is for this reason that we saw that pleasure is the beginning and end of a happy life." Again, and this time 78 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY even more unmistakably, Epicurus declares, *'When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of the libertine and the pleasures of mere enjoyment, as some critics either ignorant or antagonistic or unfriendly sup- pose, but the abse?ice of pain in the body and trouble in the mind. For it is not drinkings and revellings . . . nor tables loaded with dainties which beget the happy life, but sober reasoimig to discover what must be sought and avoided, and why, and to banish the fancies that have most power over men's souls." In short, the end of the good man's life is not pleasure, but serenity. Here, then, the great divergence be- tween the Epicurean and Stoic view comes to light. For the Epicurean interpretation of the term ** nature" is not, as with the Stoic, stern fortitude, but the self-possession of one's own life. If the true aim of life thus be serenity, it is not surprising that for long centuries Epicurean- ism should have been the philosophy of protest. Just as Epicurus himself had lived in retirement at Athens, seeking his own ideal, so his later followers, in Greece and at Rome, tried to work out their own salvation in a career apart from state or church or culture ; they attempted to make life centre in actual pleasure — in the pleas- ure of harmony with self. For this reason they were violently attacked, not only by those of orthodox faith, but also by politicians, and by men of culture for whom the traditional pagan- ism was a dead letter. Accordingly, the Epicu- rean held that serenity was to be attained only by emancipation. To achieve pleasure — to arrive at that state of harmony with self in which the absence of pain and trouble are the chief char- acteristics — a man must needs free himself from SALVATION BY WISDOM 79 all limitations whether imposed upon him by so- ciety, by religion, or by culture. Hence the need for philosophy — which is but an activity of the self, leading, through the use of reason, to the fruition of happiness. And, as naturally, this philosophy falls into two distinct parts. Man finds himself in the world ''like a child stranded in the darkness of night." Conse- quently, at the outset, a theory of this universe and of man as a portion of it must be obtained. In another of its aspects, philosophy is an activity of reason that leads to happiness. So, in the second place, the manner in which man is to use his knowledge of himself and of the world so that he may obtain serenity must be explained. Epicureanism thus separates itself into two main quests. First, it gives an account of nature and man ; second, it applies this information to each individual case with a view to showing how all may acquire happiness in the sense of serenity or harmony with self. The former is completely subordinate to the latter. Now in a materialistic system sensation is regarded as the sole criterion of reality, and all that can be known must be ob- tained through its medium. Touch, as Lucretius said, is the sense of the body, all others being but modifications of it. The universe is an aggregate of atoms, and in like manner the soul is a compound of elements. As everything is thus material and appeals to us only through the senses, it is evident that the basis of conduct must be sought in feeling. The object of ethics, consequently, must be to teach men the real nature of their feelings ; to prevent them, in other words, from mistaking the lesser for the greater pleasure. This attitude receives illustra- tion in many of Epicurus' sayings, as, for ex- ample, in the following : — " Accustom thyself in So PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY the belief that death is nothing to us, for good and evil are only where they are felt, and death is the absence of all feeling ; therefore, a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to years an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality." It is evil to yearn for immortality, because this craving produces pain ; it creates a want that can never be satis- fied, and therefore subtracts from the pleasure of life. Feeling is the sole source of the difference between good and evil. The reactionary tend- ency of the teaching peeps out here. The aim of Plato and Aristotle was to conform to a cer- tain ideal, say, as with the latter, the beautiful. Now an ideal implies that there is some larger body to which the individual belongs ; it is but the revelation of the function of some organism — a notion, not discernible in any part, but a principle linking all the members. But because the life of the city, the chief exemplar of such an organism, had passed away, the Epicureans did not experience either its necessity or its value. For them man stands alone ; he is a be- ing who possesses certain feelings, and who, doubtless, occasionally comes into relation with his fellows. But such connections are accidental and momentary. Obligations imposed by them are in no way binding. The individual man, just because his feelings are peculiarly his own, comes to be the centre of the universe. The state of nature is the ideal condition. " A body free from pain, and a mind released from perturbations," cannot be possessed unless a man isolate himself. Self-possession constitutes the prelude to serenity when feeling is the main bar to it. The man who clearly sees this has earned the title " wise," and by his wisdom he is saved. SALVATION BY WISDOM 8 1 Stoicism, like Epicureanism, was based upon an interpretation of " nature," but upon one of a very different kind. According to Zeno and his followers the world is an aggregation of blind forces governed by a single all-pervading reason. The Stoic creed is pantheistic. The distinctive nature of man, that whereby he is differentiated from other things, lies in his possession of reason. He alone can perceive that the universe is con- trolled by an ever present rational principle. Seeing, then, that the possession of this special faculty is man's peculiar prerogative, it is but proper that he should set it in authority over lower elements. No doubt he has physical ap- petites; but these belong to the animals also. A human being ought so to manage that reason may control the passions. To live according to na- ture is to live according to reason. But, like their contemporaries, the Stoics were also indi- vidualists. Each man must be ruled by his own reason. Nay more, not only is he cut off from his neighbors, but, in his life, acts are separable from one another. Merit and award are dis- tributed according to the good or evil intent of the act. No gradation is possible. All vices are of the same degree of badness, for all are due to the presence of unreason in the soul; but "the wise man is absolutely perfect, lord of himself and master of the world." Nor does the disin- tegrating influence of the decline of the city-state cease here. The wise man is not simply an in- dividual, having a life of his own to live for him- self, he is not restricted by any binding ties of race and country. He is bound to carve out his own career in his own way and for his own ends. The Stoic philosophy is thus by its own con- fession entirely an affair of practice. And so the question comes to be. By what means may a man 82 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY most successfully secure inward peace of mind and happiness ? This problem is, obviously, an ethical one, and an explanation of the world can be useful only in so far as it subserves the ends of morality. Or, to use the words of Posidonius, the Stoic, " Logic is the shell, pliysics the white, and ethics the yolk." The treatment of nature forms an introduction to the consideration of man. Matter is passive, and into it all motion proceeds ; force is active, it is the working, moving power. The two cannot be separated. The universe turns out to be a perfectly fixed, eternal order of phenomena. In it each thing has a certain office to fulfil. Thus the thing or person which best fills its place will be virtuous — that is to say, it will be reasonable, and so at- tain the highest good. In the light of such a theory it is but a step from nature to man, and the analogy between them can be readily worked out. As in the order of the phenomenal world everything is submissive to one great overruling power, so ought it to be in the life of the indi- vidual. The passions are the sole disturbers here ; reason is the ruler. This plainly implies that reason is able, and bound, to stamp the passions out. It was because the Stoics started from the logical position that force could be known only in relation to matter, and good in relation to evil, that, when they came to treat of life, the antithesis between reason and passion emerged. "Reason," says Seneca, '' is nothing else than a part of the divine spirit immersed in the human body." Accordingly, it must de- velop through all its stages without let or hin- drance. Hence greatest importance is to be attached to its growth in every case. With each man, reason becomes the sole standard of virtu- ous action. *< For man, the blessed life consists SALVATION BY WISDOM 83 in the perfection of his reason, which alone can render him self-dependent and superior to the assaults of fortune; which imparts a perception of all truth, and gives order, moderation, and dignity in action, a will harmless and benig- nant, at once lovable and admirable. . . . This is the life of virtue which is the only good." If man be thus constituted by nature, it follows that a very specific account of his ethical life can be given. And it may be said that, to all intents and purposes, the Stoic ethics are summed up in two propositions. Virtue consists in conformity to nature ; this virtue is sufficient for happiness. We have already seen that nature is a complex of matter and the force of reason which sweeps through it. There is thus a certain fate in the universe. Or, as one of the Stoics puts it, *' Fate leads us on, and what of time remains for each of us the first hour of our birth allotted. . . . A long time ago it was appointed you what you should rejoice over, what you should weep over. . . . Cause depends upon cause . . . nothing happens, but it comes." The supreme duty of the wise man is to submit himself to this order. Virtue consists in this submission. It begins, as I think Zeller pointed out, with that acknowledgment of the fact of a rational order which the wise man alone can apprehend ; it ends with a willing submission to the course of this order, an obedience which the wise man alone can render. But, secondly, virtue is suffi- cient for happiness — that is, only in submission to the course of nature is true happiness to be found. The highest good is the ** harmony of the soul." Happiness thus comes to be that harmony of the soul which arises from a perfect understanding of its own behests, and a complete compliance with them. Reason is here a law to 84 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY itself, and the life it inspires is, by consequence, a career of complete conformity with the nature of the rational order of the universe. The wise man must of necessity eschew all passion. This implies the renunciation of pleasure. Pleasure depends upon mere external considerations, while real virtue is an end in itself. This definition of virtue is one of the most important and distinc- tive Stoic doctrines. Although virtue may bring happiness, it must be sought entirely for its own sake. The moment one seeks it for the happi- ness it offers, it ceases to be virtue. "You mis- take when you ask, what is that for the sake of which I seek virtue? Herself; for she has noth- ing better ; she is her own reward." Or, as the Stoics put it in one of their most famous para- doxes, " Not to need happiness is happiness." All true good is consequently internal. On this view, even the loss of every earthly blessing, nay, death itself, may be made subservient to happi- ness. '' The ills of life," as another of the para- doxes runs, ''are not ills, except to those who bear them ill." Further, the very evils of life may be goods. The cleverest scholars set them- selves the hardest tasks, the bravest soldiers re- ceive the most perilous positions, so it is by favor of the universal reason that a man is selected to suffer the wounds inflicted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. "Prosperity is primarily to the mass, to those of low talents." " Never to have been miserable," as another paradox runs, " is to be miserable." But within the individual himself there is a certain element which militates against the attain- ment of this conformity to nature — against this virtue with its attendant happiness. In man's being, as has already been shown, a schism pre- vails, just as there is the division between matter SALVATION BY WISDOM 85 and reason in the physical world. In human nature, reason and passion ever confront one another. Passion it is that vitiates life ; it can- not coexist with a reasonable view of things. The passions, with their vain imaginations con- cerning the present and future of existence, cause all pleasures and desires, all ills and cares and fears. From this notion there results, not only the division of man's nature into two unrelated halves, but also the Stoic reduction of virtue to a merely theoretical level, it becomes purely inter- nal and individualistic ; that is to say, it can never be put to practical use in life. For if a man is to pursue his duty, he must eliminate the adverse element, and this is various in each. " What can be better for us who have received a rational nature," writes Seneca, "than reason. . . . All things, therefore, are to be made light of and borne with tranquil mind." Har- mony with self and with the world-order, indif- ference, calmness in all circumstances, these are the features of the Stoic ideal. But realization of it implies conditions, and so the problem comes to be. What are the conditions of the per- fect life? They may be summarized as four in number. First, the passions must be rooted out. Second, a man must retire from social life with its numerous absorbing cares. Third, he must school himself to hardness, he must become an ascetic. " We must be accustomed to remove ourselves," says a Stoic who, curiously enough was a millionaire, ** from all display ... to restrain all luxury, to govern our appetites, to measure things by their use, not by their orna- ment. Wealth must not be sought. An amount but little removed from poverty, and far removed from riches, so that our independence shall not be sacrificed on the one hand, nor our vanity 86 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY tempted on the other, is to be the limit of our wishes." Lastly, *' we must withdraw the mind, we must live within ourselves." For only thus will the sage be undisturbed by the whims of Fortune. And if the worst come to the worst, and the sage by living ''forfeit his independ- ence," the door stands open, ''life is easily taken." Bearing in mind, then, that Epicureanism and Stoicism were the chief constructive theories upon which the ancient world relied before the advent of Christianity, we must ask, How about the sufficiency, the availableness, of their "gos- pels " ? In Epicurus' own teaching pleasure sinks to the level of a means, or rather, follows as a re- sult of a man's proper conduct of his life. In short, it is synonymous with a certain aggregate of conditions ; it implies a serene state of body and mind such as can be attained only by shak- ing free from the demands which society and individuals make upon character. Accordingly, the teaching may be summed up by saying that pleasure is to be identified with happiness ; that happiness reposes upon freedom ; and that free- dom is open only to the wise man who, in his wisdom, knows how to obtain it. The aim of the system is so to guide a man that he may be wise, and thus become aware how to arrive at mastery over the means to happiness. "Greeks seek after wisdom." By taking thought they would add a cubit to their stature, by searching they would achieve a godlike calm, if not God Himself. Freedom depends upon that living which is " an art in some degree peculiar and special to each individual." Accordingly, to acquire it, one must, preeminently, gain insight — insight into the circumstances of his own per- SALVATION BY WISDOM 87 sonality. When this condition has been realized, and only then, can a man be said to be alive. The kind of person who can arrive at this success is the " wise man " ; he who, in clear conscious- ness of all that he is doing, subordinates every consideration to the attainment of freedom, and through it of a negative happiness consisting in the absence of disturbance. The title is not bestowed upon him because he is good, but be- cause he knows how to live. When he has be- come fully aware that there is nothing to disturb him, then he is de facto in harmony with self. So living, he has earned the fruition of that great peace which flows from a continuous limitation of self in such a way that nothing can enter in and create disturbance. The serenity of life is its goodness. Not morality, not self-sacrifice, not interest in the good, but unruffled calm, se- clusion, anxiety for completed selfhood are the marks of the wise one. Because he is happy, he is virtuous ; if he were a prey to fears, his vi- ciousness would stand completely proved. Apart altogether from its plain inadequacy as a gospel, apart too from its appeal to that limited class who can enjoy the requisite opportunities for the necessary quest, it is easy to see that this strange teaching was self-contradictory. The pleasure or happiness, the freedom, the wise man do not exist in human experience, for the excel- lent reason that they cannot. A separated per- sonality is an inherent impossibility. Independ- ence, in the sense of isolation from fellow-men and from the world, cannot be viewed as other than a mere figment of the imagination. Our freedom can be obtained only along with the freedom of others ; happiness can be enjoyed only by the man who knows how to unite with his neighbors; individuality in all its fulness can 88 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY grow to its perfect stature only in a social me- dium, with its duties that are necessarily attend- ant upon rights. Eliminate all needs, discard all social relations, and you may indeed develop independence. But, in the nature of the case, it is a mere name. It contains nothing, turns out to be a form without substance ; so empty is it that one may baptize it what one pleases. Make a desert and call it peace, if you will, but almost any title will fit. In the same way, hap- piness which is no more than self-dependence, contradicts itself. The freedom of the Epicurean consists in a removal of all restrictions, and is therefore identical with a permission to be no- where. The complete command over life which results from a soul limited to itself turns out to be a bare delusion. Little wonder, then, that despair should often have marked those who clung to it for comfort, and that escape from self, in a series of momentary pleasures, should have frequently supplemented or distorted the original teaching. All that it promised proved to be shadowy, all that it led distracted humanity to hope for was found to be hollow, and so moral suicide, in the shape of debauchery, oxfelo de se^ came to be the logical consequences of perceiv- ing that the highest conceivable career open to man was a mere void — something so deceptive as to be unworthy of pursuit. To '* live hidden " may be an excellent motto for one whose life is already a hopeless failure, it is worse than no direction for those who realize that man's chief characteristic centres in his possession of a soul that 7?mst be saved. And the ancient world gradually came to see that this resource was of no avail. The school of Zeno was more scientific, more anxious to prove systematically that the nature of SALVATION BY WISDOM 89 the world and man is such that it is good for one to be alone. Lacking the flexibility of Epicure- anism, it started with a first principle which could be applied in every case. To attain the ideal of independence — always contemplated by the wise man — it is of the last importance "to live according to nature." Stoicism thus reposes on an imaginative account of nature as a process of a reason supposed to be universally operative. The order of the world exhibits its chief trait in its changelessness. And when this has been fully fathomed, a man cannot but be convinced that one definite line of conduct remains open to him. 6' Sophists, 37 seq. Sophocles, 35, 37. Sphinx and Oedipus, 166. Spirit, preparation of the, 158 seq. Stoicism. 75, 81 seq., 88 seq., 96, 180 seq.^ 187. Tacitus, 95, 96, 158, 159. Thucydides, 39, 96-7. Vespasian, 171. Virgil, 154. Virtues, the Greek cardinal, 59 seq, / "Wisdom, failure of salvation by, 86 seq. World, preparation of the, 143 seq. Xenophon, 24, 41, 43. ' Zealots, 135. Zerubbabel, 113, 117, 118. The Guild Text Books. Entirely new editions, reprinted from the latest British editions, issued in new, tasteful, substantial styles of flexible cloth and reinforced paper bindings. i6mo, paper, eich, net 25 cts.; flexible cloth, sach, net 40 cts. The Old Testament and Its Contents. By Prof. James Robertson, D.D., of the University of Glasgow. "An admirable help for all Biblical students." — The Chris- tian Enquirer. Religions of the "World. By Principal G. M. Grant, D.D., of Queens University, Canada. "Lucid, concise, reliable and comprehensive." — The New York Obseri'er. The Presbyterian Churches: Their Place and Power in Modern Christendom. By Rev. J. N. 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