The Greek View of Life

by G. Lowes Dickinson

Section 15. Metaphysical Criticism.

While thus, on the one hand, the Greek religion by its inner evolution, was tending to destroy itself, on the other hand it was threatened from without by the attack of what we should call the "scientific spirit." A system so frankly anthropomorphic was bound to be weak on the speculative side. Its appeal, as we have seen, was rather to the imagination than to the intellect, by the presentation of a series of beautiful images, whose contemplation might offer to the mind if not satisfaction, at least acquiescence and repose. A Greek who was not too inquisitive was thus enabled to move through the calendar of splendid festivals and fasts, charmed by the beauty of the ritual, inspired by the chorus and the dance, and drawing from the familiar legends the moral and aesthetic significance with which he had been accustomed from his boyhood to connect them, but without ever raising the question, Is all this true? Does it really account for the existence and nature of the world? Once, however, the spell was broken, once the intellect was aroused, the inadequacy of the popular faith, on the speculative side, became apparent; and the mind turned aside altogether from religion to work out its problems on its own lines. We find accordingly, from early times, physical philosophers in Greece free from all theological preconceptions, raising from the very beginning the question of the origin of the world, and offering solutions, various indeed but all alike in this, that they frankly accept a materialistic basis. One derives all things from water, another from air, another from fire; one insists upon unity, another on a plurality of elements; but all alike reject the supernatural, and proceed on the lines of physical causation.

The opposition, to use the modern phrase, between science and religion, was thus developed early in ancient Greece; and by the fifth century it is clear that it had become acute. The philosopher Anaxagoras was driven from Athens as an atheist; the same charge, absurdly enough, was one of the counts in the indictment of Socrates; and the physical speculations of the time are a favourite butt of that champion of orthodoxy, Aristophanes. To follow up these speculations in detail would be to wander too far from our present purpose; but it may be worth while to quote a passage from the great comedian, to illustrate not indeed the value of the theories ridiculed, but their generally materialistic character, and their antagonism to the popular faith. The passage selected is part of a dialogue between Socrates and Strepsiades, one of his pupils; and it is introduced by an address from the chorus of "Clouds", the new divinities of the physicist:

CHORUS OF CLOUDS.

Our welcome to thee, old man, who would see the marvels that
science can show:
And thou, the high-priest of this subtlety feast, say what would
you have us bestow?
Since there is not a sage for whom we'd engage our wonders
more freely to do,
Except, it may be, for Prodicus: he for his knowledge may claim
them, but you,
Because as you go, you glance to and fro, and in dignified
arrogance float;
And think shoes a disgrace, and put on a grave face, your
acquaintance with us to denote.

STREPSIADES. Oh earth! what a sound, how august and profound! It
fills me with wonder and awe.

SOCRATES. These, these then alone, for true Deities own, the rest
are all God-ships of straw.

STREPS. Let Zeus be left out: He's a God beyond doubt; come, that
you can scarcely deny.

SOCR. Zeus indeed! there's no Zeus: don't you be so obtuse.

STREPS. No Zeus up above in the sky?
Then you first must explain, who it is sends the rain; or I
really must think you are wrong.

SOCR. Well then, be it known, these send it alone: I can prove it
by argument strong.
Was there ever a shower seen to fall in an hour when the sky
was all cloudless and blue?
Yet on a fine day, when the clouds are away, he might send
one, according to you.

STREPS. Well, it must be confessed, that chimes in with the rest:
your words I am forced to believe.

Yet before I had dreamed that the rain-water streamed from
Zeus and his chamber-pot sieve.
But whence then, my friend, does the thunder descend? that
does make us quake with affright!

SOCR. Why, 'tis they, I declare, as they roll through the air.

STREPS. What the clouds? did I hear you aright?

SOCR. Ay: for when to the brim filled with water they swim, by
Necessity carried along,
They are hung up on high in the vault of the sky, and so by
Necessity strong
In the midst of their course, they clash with great force, and
thunder away without end.

STREPS. But is it not He who compels this to be? does not Zeus this
Necessity send?

SOCR. No Zeus have we there, but a vortex of air.

STREPS. What! Vortex? that's something I own.
I knew not before, that Zeus was no more, but Vortex was
placed on his throne!
But I have not yet heard to what cause you referred the thunder's
majestical roar.

SOCR. Yes, 'tis they, when on high full of water they fly, and then,
as I told you before,
By compression impelled, as they clash, are compelled a terrible
clatter to make.

STREPS. Come, how can that be? I really don't see.

SOCR. Yourself as my proof I will take.
Have you never then ate the broth puddings you get when the
Panathenaea come round,
And felt with what might your bowels all night in turbulent tumult
resound

STREPS. By Apollo, 'tis true, there's a mighty to do, and my belly
keeps rumbling about;
And the puddings begin to clatter within and to kick up a wonderful
rout:
Quite gently at first, papapax, papapax, but soon papappappax away,
Till at last, I'll be bound, I can thunder as loud
papapappappappappax as they.

SOCR. Shalt thou then a sound so loud and profound from thy belly
diminutive send,
And shall not the high and the infinite sky go thundering on
without end?
For both, you will find, on an impulse of wind and similar causes
depend.

STREPS. Well, but tell me from whom comes the bolt through the gloom,
with its awful and terrible flashes;
And wherever it turns, some it singes and burns, and some it
reduces to ashes:
For this 'tis quite plain, let who will send the rain, that Zeus
against perjurers dashes

SOCR. And how, you old fool, of a dark-ages school, and an
antidiluvian wit,
If the perjured they strike, and not all men alike, have they
never Cleonymus hit?
Then of Simon again, and Theorus explain: known perjurers, yet
they escape.
But he smites his own shrine with these arrows divine, and
"Sunium, Attica's cape,"
And the ancient gnarled oaks: now what prompted those strokes?
They never forswore I should say.

STREPS. Can't say that they do: your words appear true. Whence comes
then the thunderbolt, pray?

SOCR. When a wind that is dry, being lifted on high, is suddenly pent
into these,
It swells up their skin, like a bladder, within, by Necessity's
changeless decrees:
Till compressed very tight, it bursts them outright, and away
with an impulse so strong,
That at last by the force and the swing of the course, it takes
fire as it whizzes along.

STREPS. That's exactly the thing, that I suffered one spring, at the
great feast of Zeus, I admit:
I'd a paunch in the pot, but I wholly forgot about making the
safety-valve slit.
So it spluttered and swelled, while the saucepan I held, till at
last with a vengeance it flew:
Took me quite by surprise, dung-bespattered my eyes, and scalded
my face black and blue!
[Footnote: Aristoph. "Clouds" 358.—Translation by B. B.
Rogers.]

Nothing could be more amusing than this passage as a burlesque of the physical theories of the time; and nothing could better illustrate the quarrel between science and religion, as it presents itself on the surface to the plain man. But there is more in the quarrel than appears at first sight. The real sting of the comedy from which we have quoted lies in the assumption, adopted throughout the play, that the atheist is also necessarily anti-social and immoral. The physicist, in the person of Socrates, is identified with the sophist; on the one hand he is represented as teaching the theory of material causation, on the other the art of lying and deceit. The object of Strepsiades in attending the school is to learn how not to pay his debts; the achievement of his son is to learn how to dishonour his father. The cult of reason is identified by the poet with the cult of self-interest; the man who does not believe in the gods cannot, he implies, believe in the family or the state.