Frederic Manning

“ For she said that in our voyage through the world we are being reminded constantly of a previous existence, and that when we are brought face to face with beauty or with virtue or with truth, in short wherever we are moved to admiration as in contemplating a work of art like the chryselephantine Zeus at Olympia, it is the memory stirring in us of the place from which we came; and, further, she asked me if I had never felt an inexplicable sadness mingling with all beauty, as if beauty itself were inseparable from sorrow. ”

“ They move gently among us, coming and going with the seasons, filling our granaries and wine-jars with their mystical gifts; corn and wine, their very bodies and blood, through which we enter into a close and intimate communion with them, and become indeed their children, or even themselves, as when their spirit possesses us entirely, and with a wild enthusiasm we range through the wooded hills, clothed in spotted fawn-skins, crowned with dark ivy, shaking the thyrsus in the air, and leaping to the sound of timbrels and pipes, and the brazen cymbals of the Great Mother. ”

“ Humanity in the lump is a beast more terrible than any in Revelations."
"Ah, no!" cried Renan, with a sudden vivacity. "There is the chief glory of the human race. They will sacrifice themselves for an impossible ideal. None of us can contemplate that great tragedy of the French Revolution without feeling cleansed by it. The enthusiasm of the people has a kind of terrible grandeur. In such moments of divine delirium all men assume heroic proportions. We may pity it for its fanaticism; we may pity it for being so easily duped; but it is impossible to deny its magnificent devotion to an ideal." ”

“ But let me warn you, Socrates, that however much you may be tortured in the presence of the beauty that lies scattered through the world, it is your business to collect each tiny fragment; and if it be a few bars of music you must build it into a song; if it be a mere tangle of coloured skeins you must weave it into a garment; if it be fragments of gold and ivory you must make them into a statue; if it be beautiful colours you must make them into a picture, or beautiful words then into a poem; and all this time you will suffer and be tortured with desire for the more perfect beauty. ”

“ In the ruined palaces of Nineveh the beasts of the desert bring forth their young, and the green lizards creep out from the crevices to sun themselves upon a fragment of some boastful inscription; but the music which echoed in its painted halls, the dancing and the choirs, the great processions of its Kings, its wisdom and folly, its vain desires and failures, its tears and laughter, these have their being still, they move mysteriously in us, a breath would quicken them into life again, we can rebuild them in moments that seem to have all the profundity of time. ”

“ We cry out that we need not be wasted, to drift forever as dust, blind, dumb, and inarticulate, yet with a dim consciousness of a life stirring beyond us and alien to us. Let us share in it. Let us have a share in the world's sunlight and the sweet air. We have personified this hope, and given it an extended significance which seems to breathe and move in all things. Each individual finds his justification in God; and it follows that his God must be merciful, just, and good; but, at the same time, the notions of justice and good are entirely peculiar to the individual. ”

“ If men err it is through ignorance; but they suffer quite independently of their deserts. It is through my sympathy with mankind that I am led into doubt. Man struggles all his life with the fluctuations and vicissitudes of fortune; his pleasures are but phantoms and visions which elude his grasp; the one certainty before him is death: an unknown terror. Why has he been set among this play of circumstance, over which he has no control, but which whirls him away like a dead leaf upon the ripples and eddies of a river? ”

“ Philip was right in saying that if we know one thing we know all others. Philip, wake up!"
"Socrates, what mischief are you up to now that Pythodorus is gone," said Philip. "You talk too much. Protagoras said simply that a monkey imagines God as a monkey, while a peacock imagines him as a peacock."
"O Philip, what a fool you are! Does a foolish man imagine a foolish God? Does a blind man imagine a blind God?" ”

“ Miserable indeed, the race of man seemed to me, O King; content that their mortal ambition should be bounded by the limits of a day; seeking only fat pastures and pleasant waters; and careless of the lot of their progeny, whose fate it is to cover the whole earth with populous cities, and stream like a river of fire, impetuous and consuming, into hidden and desolate places, which only the eyes of the gods have seen as yet. The treasure of wisdom is a treasure which is continually being lost, rediscovered, and lost again. ”

“ For me, beyond the flaming walls of the world sit the deathless gods in their quiet seats, peace flooding their hearts; and no sound of mortal anguish ascends to them, but they sit ever in their halls shining with silver and glittering with gold, and the lovely lyre makes an immortal music about them, and wine gladdens the feast, and the rhythmic motion of the dancing choirs; but for these poor artisans of Corinth the god is a companion by the way, they love to speak of him under homely words, he is the vine-dresser, the grafter of olives, the sower ”

“ Christianity with its notion of mankind as a brotherhood, and the Papacy with its notions of a spiritual empire, a suzerainty, over all peoples, have destroyed the ancient conception of the unity of Church and State. The religion of the Greeks was embodied in their laws; and the politics of the Jews, in their religion. The ideal conception of religion as something quite distinct from the State has proved unworkable, if not disastrous. All the churches have had to smite their mystics with the thunders of excommunication, to extinguish the inward light, to restrain the free play of thought. ”

“ Bagoas rode with Merodach upon the King's elephant, whose tusks were studded with precious stones, and who had jewels in his ears, and Bagoas spoke wisely unto the King.
"Man is naturally vain," said Bagoas. "He believes always that he has finally explained the universe, and that nothing remains for him but a life of virtue, and the approbation of a God, who shall exalt him above his fellows. But it seems to me, O King, that all human systems of religion and philosophy have the same nature as the system of a fakir whom I once met in the desert. ”

“ We are not arguing with the sole desire of scoring a point against each other. I do not lay traps for you, as if I were a hunter of men; but I lay traps for truth, being a hunter of truth, and having no other reason for existence but to chase and follow after it wherever it may be hidden."
"We have no more time, Socrates," said Protagoras. "Tell me your own opinion of the gods and of the aim of life." ”

“ Do you think, Euripides, that the makers of myths and the common people believe that evil is not inherent in the action itself, but depends upon the quality and nature of the agent?"
"Yes," answered Euripides; "they imagine that actions are permissible in gods which would not be permissible in man; that the gods have a right to do evil, since they have the power. On the contrary, I maintain, that a god is all goodness, and that if he revenged himself on man, or were guilty of jealousy and hatred, he would cease, by that fact, to be a god." ”

“ There are few people without a conscience. The fault of this age is not so much that it is scientific, as that it is mechanical and removed from the contemplation of Nature."
"I have sometimes thought," said Leo, "that the principal hope for religion lies in the fact that the lower classes do not think."
"It is true," said Renan; "religion is some hidden consciousness working toward unknown ends. Mankind is not entirely reasonable; it has a conscience. We can no more say that this conscience is an artificial product of society, than we can say that reason is an artificial product also. ”

“ Adam has never been in a great city, but he has seen from afar the huge towers of Uruk looming into the night, and they are to him in their proud invasion of the sky a symbol of man's rebellion against the decrees of God, who fashioned him to be a feeble creature, scratching about upon the surface of the earth, and to draw his whole being from that shallow deposit of productive soil which he cultivates laboriously. He considers our temples to be the work of some demonic agency, for he does not think it possible that beings similar to himself should uplift these gigantic masses into the air. ”

“ Content even to suffer, to realise that everything that ever lived has died for an idea, that all life is a martyrdom; but, alas! we have not even this knowledge. Our life is a dream of shadows. Our knowledge is but a focus of wandering ideas, burning a moment in a white heat, ere they pass again, diffused widely, into the unknown.
"The sense of divinity, which moves in us, may be but a hope born of this trouble and perplexity, a desire that at some future time the fragments of our being shall be collected again and fashioned into a whole. ”

“ The truth may be veiled in a mist of fable and metaphor, but he feels it to be there. At the same time, he gives it an extended sense, and interprets it in a larger spirit than that in which it was originally interpreted. It means to us at once something more and something less than it did to the ancient world; for religion is not a definite revelation of an eternal truth, but the contemplation of the unknown from the sum of man's experience. It is consequently susceptible of infinite development and extension, it reacts to every new discovery of science ”

“ We would not, if we could, cut ourselves off from the dumb herd of humanity, with its obscure sufferings, its vague desires, its inarticulate and eternal pain."
"I should not ask it of you, Euripides," said Socrates gently.
He had a real love for Euripides, a real admiration for the mind which through its own tumult and discord had come at last into the possession of peace, and to the vision of a clear hope.
"If mankind with its blind follies makes me doubt the existence of a God," continued Euripides, "its miseries make me believe in one. I am not an enemy of knowledge ”

“ All good Buddhists have attained Nirvana. The righteous Mahometan is distracted by the charms of innumerable houris. We Epicureans enjoy that moment which is eternity; and every man is justified in his own eyes."
"It is charming," said Leo.
"It is more," said Renan; "it is rational. How puerile is the mortal conception of paradise! Man has imagined a place where virtue is rewarded and vice punished. He believes in it with a passionate conviction, because he is not quite sure. He forgets that virtue must be disinterested, or it ceases to be virtue. ”

“ For the gods which we have imagined are immortal men, and man a mortal God. They differ from us in nothing but the gladness and eternity of their actions. They move delightfully on the wings of the wind; through the 81great tumult of waters their feet are swift and sure; their voices have a music that is like the fierce motion of dancing, yellow flames. God is simply our own selves, made whole, and removed from the devouring years. God is our weakness searching after strength, our blindness, thirsting after light; our desire seeking for a voice, and we worship him. ”

“ What is the difference between going as an apprentice to a good cobbler and going as an apprentice to a good man?"
"Because cobbling is an art that any one may learn, but virtue is different."
"Is virtue different from doing good?"
"No."
"A virtuous person will seek the good; he recognises goodness by his own standard?"
"Yes."
"He is the measure of truth, and he chooses a teacher who will show him a fitting wisdom, as he will choose a cobbler who will make him a fitting shoe?"
"Socrates, I frankly admit that I am tired of your cobbler."
"But is virtue doing things well or ill?" ”

“ Perhaps the whole reason of life is unconcerned with us; having a different aim to what we imagine, we ourselves being only the dust of a sculptor's workshop, the superfluous marble which he chips off from the hidden image of his desire.
"It is certain, that if there be a God he is careless of the fate of man. For, if there were a God, since he must be just and good, we should find the prayers of the good man answered, and evil would be punished in the world. ”