§ 1
To the immediate understanding of mankind nothing seems so self-evident, nothing so little in need of explanation, as the phenomenon of Life itself, the fact of man’s own existence. On the other hand, the cessation of this so self-evident existence, whenever it obtrudes itself upon his notice, arouses man’s ever-renewed astonishment. There are primitive peoples to whom death whenever it occurs seems an arbitrary abbreviation of life: if it is not due to visible forces, then some invisible magic must have caused it. So difficult is it for such peoples to grasp the idea that the present state of being alive and conscious can come to an end of its own accord.
Once reflection on such problems is aroused, life itself, standing as it does on the threshold of all sensation and experience, soon begins to appear no less mysterious than death—that kingdom into which no experience reaches. It may even come about that when they are regarded too long and too hard, light and darkness seem to change places. It was to a Greek poet that the question suggested itself: “Who knows then whether Life be not Death, and what we here call Death be called Life there below?”
From such jaded wisdom and its doubts Greek civilization is still far removed when, though already at an advanced stage in its development, it first speaks to us in the Homeric poems. The poet and his heroes speak with lively feeling of the pains and troubles of life, both in its individual phases and as a whole. The gods have allotted a life of pain and misery to men, while they themselves remain free from care. On the other hand, to turn aside from life altogether never enters the head of anyone in Homer. Nothing may be said expressly of the joy and happiness of life, but that is because such things [4] go without saying among a vigorous folk engrossed in a movement of progress, whose circumstances were never complicated and where all the conditions of happiness easily fell to the lot of the strong in activity and enjoyment. And, indeed, it is only for the strong, the prudent, and the powerful that this Homeric world is intended. Life and existence upon this earth obviously belongs to them—is it not an indispensable condition of the attainment of all particular good things? As for death—the state which is to follow our life here—there is no danger of anyone mistaking that for life. “Do not try and explain away death to me,” says Achilles to Odysseus in Hades; and this would be the answer any Homeric man would have given to the sophisticated poet, if he had tried to persuade him that the state of things after life on this earth is the real life. Nothing is so hateful to man as death and the gates of Hades: for when death comes it is certain that life—this sweet life of ours in the sunlight—is done with, whatever else there may be to follow.