Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

by Erwin Rohde

§ 4

There is an “other-worldly” tone in this philosophy, and its doctrine of the soul. Far beyond the world in which life has placed man lies the realm of pure Being, the good, the perfect, and the unspoilt. To reach that realm at last, to free the mind from the unrest and illusion of the senses, to be rid of the desires and emotions that would “nail”[74] it down here below, to sever its connexion[75] with the body and bodily things—that is the soul’s highest duty. The only reason why it is banished into this world is that it may all the more completely separate itself from the world. To die—to be dead inwardly to all that is visible, material, physical—that is the goal and the fruit of philosophy.[76] “To be ready and fit to die” is the hall-mark of the complete philosopher. For such, philosophy is the deliverer that frees him for all time from the body[77]—from its desires, its restlessness, its wild passions[78]—and gives him back again to the eternal and its silence.

To be pure, to be free from evil, to die already in this temporal world—these are the oft-repeated exhortations which the philosopher addresses to the immortal soul. Ascetic morality here again demands from man what is essentially a quite negative proceeding. But this denial of the world is only a step leading on to the most supremely positive behaviour. Katharsis is only the gateway to philosophy; and it is philosophy which teaches man how to reach what alone is positive, the only true and unconditional Being; instructs him how to reach the clear and perfect understanding of the only permanent good and how to merge himself utterly in that good.[79] The soul of the thinker yearns after Reality;[80] [473] death is for it not merely the annihilation of the chains of the body that impede it, but a very positive “acquisition of intellectual knowledge”[81] to which it is urged on by its proper nature—which is therefore also a fulfilment of its proper task. So the turning aside from the physical and the ephemeral is at the same time and without transition a turning towards the eternal and the divine. The flight from the things of this world is in itself an entry into that other world, and a becoming like to the divine.[82]

But the true realities are not to be found in this world. To grasp them plainly in its thought—to recover the untroubled vision of its spiritual eye—the soul must divest itself entirely of all the stress and distraction of the earthly. For this mundane world, the mirage that encompasses the senses, the philosopher has nothing but denial. Because it gives no foothold for true knowledge the whole world of Becoming has no independent value for his science. The apprehension of that which is never more than relative, which simultaneously manifests contrary qualities in itself, can only serve as stimulus and invitation to the search for what is absolute.[83] In this realm of doubtful shadows the soul finds nothing but obscure reminders of that which it had once beheld plainly. The beauty of the physical world which is apprehended by the noblest of the senses, the eye, serves indeed to recall to the soul’s memory the Beautiful-in-itself, of which that other is but a pale copy, and to disclose to the soul what is really its own property, what it had brought with it ready made from an earlier existence beyond the bounds of all matter.[84] But the observation of beauty here below must lead beyond itself at once and conduct the mind out of the world of mere appearance to the pure forms of the Ideal world. The process of Becoming tells us nothing about the nature of Being; the thinker learns nothing from this source—in fact he learns no new knowledge or wisdom of any kind in this world; he only recovers what he had before and always possessed in latent form.[85] The treasure, however, lies beyond the limits of this world. He must turn away his gaze from the shadow-figures upon the wall of the cave of this world, and direct it towards the sun of eternity.[86] He is placed in this world of perpetual change; to it his senses and his understanding are directly referred; and yet he must disdain and rise superior to, and flee from, all that this world offers, giving himself up immediately and entirely to the unseen, and taking flight from this world to that where he will become like God, and be purified and justified by the power and might of his knowledge.[87] [474]

Earthly life as it actually is will remain strange to him, and he a stranger in earthly life,[88] despised as a fool for his inaptitude in earthly affairs by the great majority of those who are so versed in such things.[89] He has something higher to think about—the salvation of his own soul. He will not live for the community, but for himself, and his real task.[90] Human interests seem to him hardly worth troubling about,[91] the state itself hopelessly corrupt, founded as it is upon deception and passion and injustice. At the same time, he himself of course would be the real statesman,[92] the leader who could guide his fellow citizens to their true salvation—acting not as the servant of their lusts, but as a doctor who gives help to the sick.[93] It is “not ships and harbours and walls and taxes and such trivialities”[94] that he would give the city, but justice and health and everything else which after this life can stand before the stern judgment of the other world.[95] This would be the best mode of life,[96] and he could show them the way to it; no worldly power or greatness can do as much—none of the great statesmen of the past, Themistokles, Kimon, and Perikles, understood anything of all this; all their efforts were nothing but blind error and wandering.[97]

At the climax of his life and of his philosophical development Plato completed an ideal picture of the State, drawn in accordance with the principles and the requirements of his own philosophy. It rests upon a broad foundation—the multitude of its inhabitants divided strictly into classes that in themselves and their manner of life are to display, like a beacon that can be seen afar, the virtue of Justice. At one period this had seemed to include all that was necessary for the completion of the ideal State; but now, far above that level, pointing upwards into the lofty aether above the earth, a final consummation reveals itself to him, to which all mere mundane things serve but as support and furtherance. A small minority of the citizens, the philosophers, form this last pinnacle of the building. Here on earth and in this state that is organized in conformity with justice, they will serve the state, as in duty bound and not for their own satisfaction, and take part in government.[98] As soon as duty is fulfilled they will return to the supramundane contemplation which is the aim and content of their whole life’s activity. To provide a place where these contemplatives may live, where they may be educated for their vocation, the highest there is; to allow dialectic as a form of living to take its place in the activity of worldly civilization as an object of men’s effort[99]—to bring about all this the Ideal State is built up step by step. The [475] bourgeois social virtues and their firm establishment and interconnexion, which had once seemed the real and sufficient reason for the erection of the whole edifice of the state—seen from this elevation, these no longer retain their independent importance. “The so-called virtues” all pale before the highest capacity of the soul, which is the mystic beholding of the eternal.[100] The chief mission of the perfect wise man is no longer to fulfil his obligations to the others that stand without. To make his own inner life fit and ready for self-emancipation is now his real and immediate task. Mysticism aims at a personal salvation such as the individual can only obtain for himself. Good works are no longer necessary when the mind has no further connexion with earthly life and conduct. When it comes to dealing with practical earthly affairs he who possesses the highest virtue will have all these others added unto him.[101] Virtue belongs to him; it is his real condition of being; but the particular virtues he will rarely need to use.

This lofty pinnacle is accessible to but a few. God alone and a small[102] company of mortals are able to approach in pure thought to the everlasting Reality, the sole object of certain, plain and unchanging Knowledge. The majority of men can never become philosophers.[103] And yet, according to this philosophy, the crown of all life belongs to the philosopher. This is no religion for the poor in spirit. Science—the supreme knowledge of the highest Being—is a pre-condition of salvation. To know God is to become like God.[104] It is easy to see why such a message of salvation could not attract a wider community of believers. It could not have done so without being false to its own nature. To a few lofty spirits among mankind, it offers a reward that beckons from eternity. Freedom from life in the corruptible body is the prize it offers; that and a never-ending union with true Reality—a return to what is everlasting and divine. A symbol of what the philosopher has achieved after his death will be provided by the community by whom the departed will be honoured as a Daimon.[105]

Such then is the ideal vision of a civilization in which the belief in the soul’s immortality and its vocation to an everlasting life in the kingdom of the gods was held with profound and serious conviction. The belief in immortality here becomes the corner-stone of a building, the architect of which regards all earthly things as only valid for the moment, and therefore of profound unimportance. For him only the Heaven of the spiritual world with its everlasting laws and [476] patterns seriously matters. He discards without a regret the whole of Greek culture as it had expressed itself in state and society, custom and art—an art that will last as long as humanity itself. He demands an aristocracy, and an aristocracy measured by a standard of what is the “best” that was quite beyond the reach of any possible human society even though it were as deeply impregnated with aristocratic ideas as Greek society always was. And the final aim and ideal sought by this organization of life on earth was to be the superseding of all earthly life . . .

The mind of Plato, equally ready to receive as to give, was not likely to become immobilized for ever in a mystic rapture of vision. Even when he had finished the Republic he did not cease to reshape his system at many points and in many directions, while some special problems were taken up again for further and repeated study. Even a second sketch of a political system was left behind by him in which he sought to lay down rules for the guidance of life among the multitude who are still regarded as completely shut out from the realm of the everlasting Forms. To this end the highest aims of human endeavour are almost left out of sight and practical rules for reaching the attainable “better” are supplied for the benefit of the majority. He had learnt resignation at many points. Nevertheless, the profound conviction of all his thoughts remained unchanged; the claims that he put before the world and mankind remained essentially the same. For this reason after generations have not been mistaken in seeing in him the priestly man of wisdom, who with warning finger points the immortal spirit of man on its way from this feeble world upwards to the everlasting life.