John Oakesmith

“ An age which attempts to reinvigorate its own ethical life by draughts of inspiration from springs hallowed by their duration from an immemorial antiquity, will naturally regret that currents, which once ran full, now flow no longer in their early strength, but have dwindled to insignificant rills, or are dried up altogether in their courses. And there is no source of religious inspiration so greatly held in honour as that which comes from the communication of mankind with the Divine Being. ”

“ If there is a Providence, there is existence after death; and if there is existence after death, then there is stronger reason for supposing that every soul receives its due reward or punishment for its life on Earth. But here Plutarch, after just touching one of the cardinal principles of Christian teaching, the dogma of Heaven and Hell, starts away from the consequence which almost seems inevitable, and which Christianity accepted to the full—the belief that our life here should be modelled in relation to the joys and penalties that await us in the other world. ”

“ The soul, in like manner, is God’s instrument. Now the virtue of an instrument consists in imitating, subject to its natural limitations, the power that makes use of it, and in exhibiting the thought of that power in operation. This it cannot do to the extent of reproducing the purity and perfection of the Divine Creator, but its work is mixed with alien matter. The Moon reproduces the splendour of the Sun, but in a dim and weak form. These images are representations of the way in which the Pythia reproduces for the service of mankind the thoughts of God. ”

“ And if you demand proofs about every one of the gods, laying a profane hand on every temple, and bringing sophistical smartness to bear on every shrine, nothing will be safe from your peering eyes and prying fingers. What an abyss of Atheism opens beneath us, if we resolve every deity into a passion, a power, or a virtuous activity!’” [150] This is, of course, an extreme conventional view, but the fact, that it is put so fully, at least argues Plutarch’s sympathy with it, though he would not, in his own person, have pinned himself down to so unqualified an expression of it. ”

“ The divine nature, conceived as absolutely simple, admits of division; at the pinnacle of the scale soars Unity; beneath it Intelligence, identical with Being, or the Logos; in the third rank, the Universal Soul, or the Spirit. We have not here three gods, but three hypostases of the same God. ”

“ Was it possible that a man so steeped in the best literature, so keen a student of the greatest philosophies, could be a believer, to any serious extent, in those traditions which appear so crude and impossible in the light of our higher modern ideals? And if he could think them worthy of credit, by what method of interpretation was this consummation facilitated? How could he persuade himself and others to find in them at once the sanction and the inspiration of virtuous conduct? ”

“ And whether he is the sun, or lord and father of the sun and of the whole perceptible world, it is not right to believe that he would deprive the men of to-day of the help of his utterances, for he is the author and supporter of our life, and the master of our intelligence. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Providence, which, like a kind and tender mother, has given us all that we possess, should wish to punish us in one single point alone—by taking away from us that prophetic aid which was once given to us. ”

“ This “extravagance du christianisme” [25] is, of course, utterly at variance with the general character of the efforts by which either a Greek or a Roman directed his steps in the ways of goodness. Neither Aristotle nor Horace, neither Plato nor Seneca, would have admitted many of the most lauded virtues of modern ethical systems to be virtues at all. Least of all would they have hailed as a virtue that passionate excess of enthusiasm which makes Virtue independent of Reason, and greets intellectual impossibilities as the trials and tests of the “virtue” of Belief. ”

“ A beautiful and impressive liturgy is, indeed, not without effect in surrounding with a quiet atmosphere of goodness a class of minds whose temptations are mercifully proportioned to their weakness; but real moral worth must spring from internal sources, and these internal sources were not to be found in the Greek national Religion. Hence a wider field for Philosophy in the lives of a people whose eagerness in the pursuit of virtue was as marked, if not so successful, as their aspirations after perfection of art and profundity of knowledge. ”

“ He regarded the welfare of Society and the State, of the family and the individual citizen, as bound up with a belief in the gods whose agency was so clearly visible in bringing the world to that state of perfection which it now enjoyed, and which promised to be eternal. No one now even dreamed of doubting the identity of the gods of Rome with those of Greece, and Plutarch carries the identification to the extent of including the gods of almost every people constituting the Roman Empire. ”

“ Besides, the matters on which the oracle is now consulted are not such as to require the mystery and magnificence of verse. [287] “In these cases it would be absurd to employ the diction, metre, and imagery of poetry, when what is required is a simple and concise reply. It would be like a vain Sophist to turn an oracle finely for the sake of show. The Pythian priestess, moreover, is noble and virtuous in her own character, and when she mounts the tripod and approaches the god, she is more intent on truth than appearance, more regardful of the god’s message than of the praise or blame of men.” ”

“ If, by chance an author has left writings marked by a lofty conception of morality, and breathing the purest and most disinterested love of virtue, this very fact has been sufficient to justify a denial of their Pagan origin, and the assertion that the true source of their inspiration must have been Judæa. Hence the curious struggles of many intelligent men to establish a personal connexion between Paul and Seneca, and to demonstrate that the Ethics of Plutarch are coloured by Christian modes of thought. ”

“ It is a bold and beautiful attempt to reconcile the existence of an actively benevolent Deity with the long-continued, often permanent, impunity of wickedness in this world; an endeavour to solve the question raised, especially by Epicureans, but not unfraught with solicitude for philosophers of other schools, respecting the patent fact that human virtue and human vice have no natural and necessary connexion with human happiness on the one hand and human misery on the other. ”

“ Plutarch had been content to state the Unity, Eternity, Absoluteness of God. He needed such a conception to make the world intelligible; but he defined his conception with a rare simplicity which satisfies the practical mind as well as meets the essential requirements of Philosophy. But the Neo-Platonist theology refines and subdivides and abstracts to an extent which puzzles and bewilders its most earnest students, and removes God infinitely further from mankind than even the Ideas of Plato are removed. “According to Plotinus, God is Goodness without Love. ”

“ The present springs inevitably from the past, the future from the present. The one follows naturally upon the other by a succession which is unbroken from beginning to end, and, accordingly, he who knows the natural causes of past, present, and future events, and can connect their mutual relationships, can predict the future, knowing, in the words of Homer, ‘things that are now, things that shall be, and things that are over.’ The whole art of Dialectics consists in the knowledge of the Consequent. ”

“ Plutarch is aware of these clangers. He knows that Dæmonology, and even Theology, may involve Superstition, and he takes pains to close those avenues to its approach, which a misunderstanding of the subject, a mistaken mental attitude towards it, may easily throw widely open. He seldom misses an opportunity of inculcating the proper attitude of mind to assume in face of questions of Religion, or of placing such questions in an atmosphere of clear and rational daylight, which is equally unlike the dim gloom of Superstition, and the blinding glare of Atheism. ”

“ The purport of this argument, and of the examples which Plutarch, always rich in illustration, furnishes in support of it, is clearer than the need of attaching it to the Platonic scheme of creation. Plutarch believes that “God is slow to anger”; because gentleness and patience are part of His nature, and because by speedy punishment, He would save a few, but by delaying His justice He gives help and admonition to many. God, moreover, knows how much virtue He originally implanted in the heart of every man. He knows the character and inclination of every guilty soul ”

“ For the soul in its own essence, and for great and good souls among mankind, Plato certainly had the deepest reverence; but he had no share in the religious sentiment of democracy which dignifies man as man, and regards with indifference the highest personal qualities in comparison with the essential attributes of common humanity.—He rated so high the difficulty of attaining genuine insight and goodness that he thought it much if they could be realized even in a few ”

“ Yet must we extend gratitude and love to those who believe that Apollo and the Sun are the same, because they attach their idea of God to that which they most honour and desire of anything they know. They now see the God as in a most beautiful dream: let us awaken them and summon them to take an upward flight, so that they may behold his real vision and his essence, though still they may revere his type, the Sun, and worship the life-giving principle in that type ”

“ As regards Peace, our peoples have no present need of politicians. Every Greek war, every Barbarian war, has vanished from among us. For Freedom, our peoples enjoy as much as their rulers allow them, and a greater share would perhaps not be any better for them. For fine seasons and plentiful harvests, for families of ‘children like their sires,’ and for gracious aid to the new-born child, the good man in his prayers will invoke the gods on behalf of his fellow-citizens. ”

“ He draws a beautiful picture of the happiness accompanying participation in divine services, asserting, in a lofty strain of religious feeling, that it is from a recognition of the presence of God in these services that the sense of happiness proceeds. “He that denies the Providence of God has no share in this exceeding joy. For it is not abundance of wine and well-cooked meats that gladden our hearts in a religious festival; it is our good hope and belief that God Himself is graciously present and approving our acts.” ”

“ Contemporary with the work of Aristotle and his insistence upon the necessity that each individual man should seek for the chief good in the sphere of his own actual experience, occurred the relaxation of the dominant claims of the State to the best part of the energies and activities of the citizen. The change in the political condition of Greece consequent upon the Macedonian conquest had turned the Greek citizen back upon his own soul for inspiration to guide his steps aright. ”

“ It became, in fact, quite evident, though not, of course, explicitly asserted, or perhaps even consciously admitted, that the gods, as represented in the Homeric poems and as existing in the popular imagination, were quite impossible as a foundation for Morality, though surpassingly splendid as the material of Art. It is hardly too much to say that, after the establishment of the great philosophic schools in the fourth century, all the conscious inspiration to a life of Virtue, and all the consolations which it is the more usual function of Religion to administer, were supplied by Philosophy. ”

“ Is it not possible that Paganism, which out of the multitude of separate gods had evolved the idea of the One Pure and Perfect Deity, might also, out of the many-sided activities of the half-human, half-divine Dæmons, have arrived at the belief in a single mediatory power, and, with a perception unblinded by polemic bitterness, have been prepared to merge this conception in the Divine Man of the Catholic Church? ”

“ But he who first made use of both these principles, combining creative Reason with created Matter, freed us from fear of criticism either on the ground of impiety or unreason. For we deprive prophetic inspiration neither of God nor of Reason when we allow as its material the human soul, and assign as its instrument the inspiring exhalation. [305] The Earth, indeed, breeds these exhalations, but he that implants in the earth its tempering and transforming power—I mean the Sun—is regarded as a god in our ancestral religion. ”

“ We are conscious of some artificial straining of the argument in this place, and shortly perceive that the mention of the soul of Dionysius is intended to prepare the way for a discussion on the immortality of the soul. Plutarch cannot believe that the gods would show so much protective care for man—would give so many oracles, enjoin so many sacrifices and honours for the dead—if they knew that the souls of the dead perished straightway, leaving the body like a wreath of mist or smoke, as the Epicureans believed. ”

“ We can already note that Plutarch believes in the “goodness” of God in a sense quite distinct from the “absence of envy” distinguishing the Platonic Creator, or even from the sense involved in Plato’s admission that the gods love the just, since one always loves that which is made in one’s own image. [197] We can see him going further, indeed, than Aristotle, who compares the love of men for the gods to the love of children for their parents, a love which is based upon a recognition of their goodness and superiority, and of their having been the authors of the greatest benefits to humanity. ”

“ Augustine to Cardinal Newman. What is felt to be goodness is loved with a personal adoration which is convinced that nothing in the world is of import compared with the hope of one day touching the mere hem of that garment of holiness, the mystic effluence of which has already power to irradiate life with a strange beauty and meaning. ”

“ Human reason, reason still imperfectly free from the meshes of sense, stops with the conception of the Universal Soul, the active principle of motion; the reason of the Philosophers rises higher, to the Motionless Intelligence, the depository of the essences and types of all things; it is love and ecstasy alone that can carry us to the conception of Absolute Unity.”
Almost the only thing that is easy to understand in the Neo-Platonic theology is its adoption of the conceptions of various schools of Greek Philosophy. ”

“ However much Philosophy should endeavour to free [85] the mind from the crude and vulgar elements in the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” she must never be tempted to profess other than the most pious belief in its fundamental truth and right; and the ultimate aim of Philosophy must be to strengthen and revive the ancient Religion by freeing it from inconsistencies and crudities which, so long as they appeared to be an essential part of the system, only existed to shock the pious and to encourage atheism. ”