[Footnote 389: ][ (return) ] Cicero.
These ancient poems, then, were the public documents of the religion of Greece--the repositories of the national faith. And it is deserving of especial note that the philosopher was just as anxious to sustain his speculations by quoting the high traditional authority of the ancient theologian, as the propounder of modern novelties is to sustain his notions by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. Numerous examples of this solicitude will recur at once to the remembrance of the student of Plato. All encroachments of philosophy upon the domains of religion were watched as jealously in Athens in the sixth century before Christ, as the encroachments of science upon the fields of theology were watched in Rome in the seventeenth century after Christ. The court of the Areopagus was as earnest, though not as fanatical and cruel, in the defense of the ancient faith, as the court of the Inquisition was in the defense of the dogmas of the Romish Church. The people, also, as "the sacred wars" of Greece attest, were ready quickly to repel every assault upon the majesty of their religion. And so philosophy even had its martyrs. The tears of Pericles were needed to save Aspasia, because she was suspected of philosophy. But neither his eloquence nor his tears could save his friend Anaxagoras, and he was ostracized. Aristotle had the greatest difficulty to save his life. And Plato was twice imprisoned, and once sold into slavery. [390]
[Footnote 390: ][ (return) ] Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 305.
It is unnecessary that we should, in this place, again attempt the delineation of the theological opinions of the earlier periods of Grecian civilization. That the ancient Greeks believed in one Supreme God has been conclusively proved by Cudworth. The argument of his fourth chapter is incontrovertible. [391] However great the number of "generated gods" who crowded the Olympus, and composed the ghostly array of Greek mythology, they were all subordinate agents, "demiurges," employed in the framing of the world and all material things, or else the ministers of the moral and providential government of the εἷς θεὸς ἀγέντος--the one uncreated God. Beneath, or beyond the whole system of pagan polytheism, we recognize a faith in an Uncreated Mind, the Source of all the intelligence, and order, and harmony which pervades the universe the Fountain of law and justice; the Ruler of the world; the Avenger of injured innocence; and the final Judge of men. The immortality of the soul and a state of future retribution were necessary corollaries of this sublime faith. This primitive theology was unquestionably the people's faith; the faith, also, of the philosopher, in his inmost heart, however far he might wander in speculative thought. The instinctive feeling of the human heart, the spontaneous intuitions of the human reason, have led man, in every age, to recognize a God. It is within the fields of speculative thought that skepticism has had its birth. Any thing like atheism has only made its appearance amid the efforts of human reason to explain the universe. The native sentiments of the heart and the spontaneous movements of the reason have always been towards faith, that is, towards "a religious movement of the soul." [392] Unbridled speculative thought, which turns towards the outer world alone, and disregards "the voices of the soul," tends towards doubt and irreligion. But, as Cousin has said, "a complete extravagance, a total delusion (except in case of real derangement), is impossible." "Beneath reflection there is still spontaneity, when the scholar has denied the existence of a God; listen to the man, interrogate him unawares, and you will see that all his words betray the idea of a God, and that faith in a God is, without his recognition, at the bottom of his heart." [393]
[Footnote 391: ][ (return) ] "Intellectual System of the Universe;" see also ch. iii., "On the Religion of the Athenians."
[Footnote 392: ][ (return) ] Cousin's "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 22.
[Footnote 393: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., vol. i. p. 137.
Let us not, therefore, be too hasty in representing the early philosophers as destitute of the idea of a God, because in the imperfect and fragmentary representations which are given us of the philosophical opinions of Thales, and Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, we find no explicit allusions to the Uncreated Mind as the first principle and cause of all. A few sentences will comprehend the whole of what remains of the opinions of the earliest philosophers, and these were transmitted for ages by oral tradition. To Plato and Aristotle we are chiefly indebted for a stereotype of those scattered, fragmentary sentences which came to their hands through the dim and distorting medium of more than two centuries. Surely no one imagines these few sentences contain and sum up the results of a lifetime of earnest thought, or represent all the opinions and beliefs of the earliest philosophers! And should we find therein no recognition of a personal God, would it not be most unfair and illogical to assert that they were utterly ignorant of a God, or wickedly denied his being? If they say "there is no God," then they are foolish Atheists; if they are silent on that subject, we have a right to assume they were Theists, for it is most natural to believe in God. And yet it has been quite customary for Christian teachers, after the manner of some Patristic writers, to deny to those early sages the smallest glimpse of underived and independent knowledge of a Divine Being, in their zeal to assert for the Sacred Scriptures the exclusive prerogative of revealing Him.
Now in regard to the theological opinions of the Greek philosophers, we shall venture this general lemma--the majority of them recognized an "incorporeal substance" [394] an uncreated Intelligence, an ordering, governing Mind. Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, who were Materialists, are perhaps the only exceptions. Many of them were Pantheists, in the higher form of Pantheism, which, though it associates the universe with its framer and mover, still makes "the moving principle" superior to that which is moved. The world was a living organism,
"Whose body nature is, and God the soul."