Albert Réville

“ I may be mistaken, but when I look at Apollonius the sage, with his everlasting maxims, the foolish Damis, and Philostratus the rhetorician, and all those emperors and empresses who, in the quietness of their domestic circles, decide how the world is to be restored to virtue—when I look at all those councils of women, and men of letters, and others well versed in the ritualisms of the age, I seem to have before me a picture of Chinese life with all its most characteristic traits. They wish to appear as though they were in earnest, they wish to look imposing, but they are simply absurd. ”

“ If the reform she dreamt of was ever realised, Paganism would have its son of God, pure, blameless, devoted to his mission, and adding to his doctrines the weight of influence which a bodily manifestation and a real life alone can give to an ideal theory. Hence this reform must be a positive religion, and not only a system of philosophy. This is why Apollonius, though a great friend of the philosophers, must be superior to them all, even to Socrates. ”

“ It is strange that, just as the biography of Apollonius is in a great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative, so the life of Pythagoras, as it is found written in the work of Porphyry and Iamblichus, is nothing more than a reproduction of the characteristic traits in the life of the hero of Philostratus. Like Apollonius, Pythagoras had made long voyages in order that he might become the receptacle of all earthly wisdom. He had his Domitian in the tyrant Phalaris. He is the son of Apollo just as Apollonius is the son of Proteus. He works countless miracles. ”

“ When Philostratus drew an almost entirely imaginary picture of the character who was to stand as the ideal man of the traditional religion—when Porphyry and Iamblichus made up a legendary Pythagoras, can we say that they were impostors and men who were actuated by sinister or criminal motives? If we read their writings carefully, we shall be convinced of the contrary. With all deference, then, to the critics, we say that these men could have had no other motive than the one they avowed openly—viz., the moral and religious reform of their contemporaries. ”

“ This is the price which we have had to pay for the illimitable progress of humanity in knowledge and in power. If we understand the Gospel rightly we shall find that it has taught us more than a knowledge of certain great and vital truths; it has created in us a thirst for truth itself, and it is with truth as it is with righteousness, the blessed are not those who think they possess it, but who are continually hungering and thirsting after it. ”

“ Apollonius began to travel up and down the empire, sowing everywhere the seeds of discontent and rebellion against the crowned monster. Though at a distance, he fosters in Rome itself a conspiracy in favour of the virtuous Nerva, whose imminent elevation to the throne he foresees with certainty. Having been warned of this, Domitian ordered him to be arrested, when the dauntless philosopher, taking the initiative, appears of his own free will in the very heart of Rome, in spite of the entreaties of his disciples and of Damis himself that he should not go up to the city. ”

“ Apollonius heals many sick people, and does much good, but he does it coldly, correctly, and more like an artist who is trying to eliminate all sounds of discord from the great harmonies of Nature, than like one who is touched by the infirmities and sufferings of that sacred being, so great and yet so miserable, whom we call man. ”

“ Besides, in all violations of the moral law he only sees a series of evil and isolated acts which depend solely upon the free will of each individual; but, like many a modern philosopher, he is blind to that fundamental incompetency to do the good which our conscience dictates which exists in us all—that tendency to selfishness, that proneness to evil, which bears the same relation to particular and successive faults as the stem does to the branches and the leaves and the fruits of a tree. ”

“ It is quite true that Apollonius is chaste and temperate—that he is actuated by the noble desire to know, and the still nobler desire to communicate his knowledge to mankind. He is ingenious, learned, and, generally speaking, there is a something at once lively and original in his language when he does not indulge in too long an oration—something which is admirably suited to the character of a popular reformer ”

“ THE acknowledged triumph of Christianity during the reign of Constantine has always been considered one of those unaccountable revolutions and one of those historical surprises which, unconnected us they seem to be with any phenomena of the past, might almost be deemed miraculous. One longs to find out by what process the human mind passed so rapidly from a contemptuous and utter denial of the teachings of Christianity to an interest in and an avowed sympathy for the doctrines of the new creed. ”

“ Hollow forms which only serve to hide, and that faintly, a state of barbarism in social habits, a hopeless want of moral vigour and taste for the infinite, a certain barrenness and incorrigible shallowness of mind, the grossest superstitions joined to the most listless indifference to religious and scientific truth—such would have been our condition. ”

“ The essence of the gods is the light of heaven. By partaking of it man becomes a god, and this is only natural in man, inasmuch as his soul is a ray of the Divine essence, imprisoned in the body for awhile, and journeying through a series of existences until the moment when it shall have been sufficiently trained in science and in the practice of virtue to gain admission into the heavenly regions. ”

“ However, we cannot but believe that the real character of the Pagan Christ was sadly metamorphosed as it passed through the hands of Philostratus. Its interest as a channel of instruction having failed, it will be unnecessary to discuss seriously the historical value of the biography. It is more than evident that when people invent, as Philostratus has invented when he speaks of a country to which he thinks none of his readers will follow him, it is very easy to give the reins to one's imagination in a description of events which occurred a century ago. ”

“ We have before us a regular system of universalism—a kind of Pagan universalism; and yet we can trace through it all, and at every step, the aristocratic spirit of antiquity. Grecian pride, and the high disdain which every man born and nurtured in Grecian civilisation felt for all other nations, were ever asserting their rights. We are reminded by this of the case of the Christianised Jews in the two first centuries, who preached the doctrines of a religion which in theory was to be universal, and yet which was to retain, at all costs, the Divine and exclusive privileges of the Israelites. ”

“ Julia Domna was beautiful enough to make the prediction easy of fulfilment in some way or other, and it may fairly be presumed that her beauty and sound sense, added to a lively imagination, contributed with the promising oracle to make a deep impression on the heart of the austere general. As soon as she had been made empress she gathered round her the finest intellects and greatest orators of the day; amongst them were Dion Cassius, the historian, the eminent lawyers Paulus, Papinian, and Ulpian, and Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius. ”

“ It is only when the natural selfishness of the human heart has been fully realised that a guarantee is sought against the ever-possible encroachments of an autocracy in the various methods of control extant, such as in collective representation, in publicity, in the personal responsibility of the ruling authorities—in a word, in all the free institutions of a free state. Apollonius believed in the possibility of a well-meaning and benevolent despotism, and could not imagine a better form of government. If the despot be a bad man, he must be removed by violent means ”

“ However, it must be granted that a certain atmosphere of pure and true morality pervades the whole of this system of teaching. There is a well-established theory in it, that virtue is the only foundation of happiness and true piety. It is a growth which one scarcely expected to find flourishing so luxuriantly in a decidedly Pagan country. We must not forget that Apollonius is not only a philosopher, a moralist, like Epictetus or Zeno—he is at the same time a popular reformer, an initiator, a kind of universal priest ”

“ According to the myth, the physical deity became the symbol of clear and penetrating wisdom. It was hardly worth while that Apollonius should have made such a display of Pagan rationalism if he was so soon to fall again into the most complete mythological system.
A contrast, or rather an inconsistency, of the same character may be noticed in the views of Apollonius on humanity in general. On the one hand, the whole of his life and the whole of his teaching are founded on the idea that all men are called to receive and practise truth. ”

“ When Apollonius wants to deliver himself of some particularly high-flown sentiment, he usually propounds to Damis some knotty point for his solution; Damis gives an absurd reply, which furnishes our incomparable philosopher with an opportunity to exhibit his overwhelming superiority, and Damis, who is apparently a man of excellent temper and spirits, laughs at his own folly. ”

“ It is quite possible that under such circumstances the recollection of a human being indistinctly known by the name of Pythagoras would have floated in our memories as the Buddha of the West. We should have had our Mussulmans brought by the invasion of the Arabs, but no change would have taken place. Respect for the past and superstition would have ruled supreme amongst us, just as we see them still when decay begins its work of destruction in the social body, and men do not think that it is even possible to amend the present. ”

“ Apollonius is born in a mysterious way about the same time as Christ. Like Him he went through a period of preparation during which he displayed wonderful precocity in religious matters; then came a season of public and positive activity; then a passion, a kind of resurrection, and an ascension. The messengers of Apollo sang at his birth as the angels did at that of Jesus. He is exposed to the attacks of enemies, though always engaged in doing good. He goes about from place to place whilst carrying out his work of reform ”

“ Apollonius seems inclined to believe that the various gods who are worshipped by the people are symbols or different representations of one and the same deity. This is the reason why he visits all the temples without distinction, and endeavors to purify the forms of worship adopted in them from every element of licentiousness which the superstition of the vulgar might have mixed up with them. Venus herself must become the goddess of pure love, free from all carnal lust. ”

“ The most wonderful miracles are performed at every step; and although the partial greatness which was enjoyed for a time by the Jewish Christ cannot be denied, and the partial truth which He taught cannot be gainsayed, and although those who have been driven into His small Church by the abuse of popular Paganism are tolerated, yet it would be absurd to hail Him as the founder of the universal religion; and it remains an obvious fact that He must play a very secondary part by the side of the glorious and Divine Apollonius. ”

“ History has failed to notice the powerful influence of a priestly family composed entirely of women during its most flourishing days, and which, so long as the dynasty of Severus lasted, did imperceptibly, yet most really and powerfully, turn the tide of events and direct the current of thought in the Roman empire. ”

“ And consistently with this progress of ideas, there arose a great and mysterious embodiment of ancient wisdom which nearly became the Buddha of the West, and which would probably have remained so to this day, but that the appearance and triumph of Christianity caused the Western world to deviate for ever from its original course: that embodiment of wisdom was Pythagoras. ”

“ Such a mixture of severity of morals and shamelessness in religious rites would inevitably produce in the minds of the people of that time the same effect that was produced in our own time, when by some strange convulsion the restored theocracy of the Middle Ages was transformed but a few years since into the guardian of our civilisation and our social progress, and the revival of the Inquisition became the palladium of our modern liberties. ”