1. THE DEGRADATION OF ANIMALISM[140]
Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find animalism, or at any rate specific kinds of animals regarded as sacred and worshipped, because in them the Divine itself is taken to be visible to sense. The animal form is consequently also a main feature of their artistic representations, albeit they are in addition merely used as symbolic and in association with human forms, in the stage previous to that where we find the human, and only the human, apprehended by consciousness as that which is alone true. It is only in virtue of the self-consciousness of the spiritual that the respect for the obscure and gloomy ideality of animal life disappears. This has already taken place among the ancient Hebrews who regard, as we have already observed, the whole of Nature neither as symbol nor as the presence of God, and attach to external objects merely the powers and vitality which in fact dwell within them. At the same time there still remains even among them, if in accidental fashion, at least a vestige of reverence for the living thing as such. We may illustrate this with the fact that Moses forbids the use of animal blood as food for the reason that life is centred in the blood. Man, however, is really under a necessity to eat that which is his natural food. The next step which we must draw attention to in this passage to classical art consists in lowering the high worth and position of what is animal, and making this degradation itself the content of religious conceptions and artistic productions. And illustrative of this we find abundant examples from which I shall merely offer the following selections.
(a) We find that among the Greeks certain animals appear conspicuous among others, as the snake, for example, is presented us in the sacrifices of Homer as an exceptionally beloved genius[141], and before all others it is this species which is offered to one god, while others are appropriated to some other. We find, further that the hare, which runs across the way, birds observed in their flight to right hand or left, and entrails are investigated as fruitful in prophetic significance. All this, it is true, indicates a real reverence for the animal type, since the gods communicate through them and speak to men by means of omens. If we look at the heart of the matter, however, we shall find these to be merely isolated revelations, suggestive of superstition no doubt, but merely momentary hints of the Divine. On the other hand, it is an important fact that animals are sacrificed and the sacrificial flesh eaten. Among the Indians sacred animals are on the contrary preserved alive as such, and taken care of, and among the Egyptians they are even preserved after their death. For the Greek it is the sacrifice which is sacred. In the sacrifice man demonstrates that he is willing to give up a consecrated thing to his gods, and to deprive himself wholly of the use of the same. And in this connection we may observe a characteristic trait in the Greek rite, among which people the sacrifice was observed as at the same time a hospitable feast[142], only a part of the same being dedicate to the gods, that is, the portion which it was assumed they alone could enjoy, while the Greek himself retained and feasted upon the flesh. Out of this circumstance originated a mythical tale in Greece. The ancient Greeks, it is said, sacrificed with the greatest solemnity to the gods, and suffered the entirety of the sacrificial animal to be consumed in the flames. Not even the poorer suppliants dared contest this great waste. So Prometheus endeavoured to obtain by request from Zeus, that they were merely under an obligation to sacrifice a portion, and could devote the remainder to their own uses. He slew two oxen, burnt the liver of both, converted, however, all the bones into one, the flesh into the remaining hide of the animals, and presented Zeus the choice. Zeus, deceived by appearances, selected the bones because they were a larger portion and left the flesh in this way for human consumption. For this reason, when the flesh of sacrificial animals was consumed, the remaining portions, which were devoted to the gods, were burnt up in the same fire. Zeus, however, took away fire from men because by so doing he made it impossible for them to celebrate their feast. Little help the ruse gave him. Prometheus robbed him of the fire and in the excess of his joy flew back faster than he sped thither; for which cause, so the tale goes, the bringer of good news invariably brings "speed" with him. In this way the Greeks have directed attention to this progress in human culture and preserved and reclothed the same in myth for the mind.
(b) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet further degradation of animalism the traditions of famous huntings, such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles, the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the other hand, has wholly made fun of him.
(c) Thirdly, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied, on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the thirteenth book, according to their content, they are older than the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism, treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of Ajax and Aeneas.
(α) Generally speaking, we may regard the metamorphoses as a contrast to the conception and worship implied in animalism. Looked at from the ethical side of Spirit they include essentially the negative attitude toward Nature, making the animal and other inorganic forms a phase of human degradation. Consequently, if among the Egyptians the gods of Nature's elements are exalted and made vital in animals, here conversely, as we have already intimated, the natural form appears before us as an easier or difficult lapse and a monstrous crime, as the existence of an ungod-like, unfortunate thing, and as the embodiment of pain, in which the human is no longer able to remain self-contained. For this reason they have not the significance of the migration of souls in the Egyptian sense of that expression; this is a migration which does not imply guilt, but rather is on the contrary, if we take the case of the passage of the human soul into the animal, regarded as an exaltation.
As a whole, however, this is no severely exclusive circle of myths, however different the objects of Nature may be, into which that which is spiritual is banished. A few examples will sufficiently elucidate the point.
Among the Egyptians the wolf plays a part of great importance, as, for example, in the case where Osiris appears as beneficent protector of his son Horus in the latter's conflict with Typhon, and in a whole series of Egyptian coins is represented as the assister of Horus. And speaking generally the association of the wolf and the sun-god is a primitive one. In the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, on the other hand, the conversion of Lycaon into the form of a wolf is presented us as a punishment for his impiety. After the subjugation of the giants, we are told[143], and after the annihilation of their bodily shapes the Earth, warmed by the blood of its sons which had been scattered in all directions, revitalized the warm blood, and, in order that no vestige of the former wild stock should remain, brought into being a race of men. Yet for all that was this after-birth contemptuous of the gods, eager for savage deeds and murder. Then Jupiter called the gods into conclave with a view to destroy this mortal race. He informed them how Lycaon had cunningly formed stratagems against himself, the wielder of the lightning and their sovereign lord. When, such is the story, the worthlessness of the times was apparent to him, he descended from Olympus, and came to Arcadia. "I furnished signs," the narration continues, "that a god had drawn nigh and the people began to supplicate." First, to make merry over these pious prayers was Lycaon, who forthwith cried out: "I will make experiment whether this indeed be a god or mortality, and the truth shall not remain in doubt." "He made preparation," continued Jupiter, "to slay me when oppressed with slumber; he was possessed with the passion for discovering the truth. And not contented with this, he made an incision with his sword in the throat of a goat of Molassian pedigree and boiled as to one part the only partially dead members; and as to the rest baked them on the fire, and placed both portions before me to eat. Wherefore I, with avenging flame, have laid his homestead in ashes. Affrighted he fled forth from thence, and when he reached the silent field he broke forth: in howls and strove in vain to utter speech. With rage in his jaws and in the eagerness of his animal lust for murder he turned against the cattle, and rejoices even now in their blood; his garments have become the hairy hide, and his arms have turned into thighs. He is a wolf, and preserves the signs of the primitive shape."
The tale of Procne, who was changed into a swallow, sets before us the gravity of the committed abomination with a like emphasis. When, so the tale runs[144], Procne begs of her husband, Tereus—she happened at the time to stand in his favour—that he will, forthwith let her go to see her sister or suffer her sister to visit her, Tereus hastens to launch his vessel on the sea and quickly reaches the harbour of Piraeus with his seamanship. He, however, barely catches sight of Philomela before he is violently enamoured of her. At his departure Pandion, the father, binds him on oath to protect her with the love of a father, and to send back as soon as possible the alleviation of his old age. The voyage, however, is hardly over when the barbarous man deprives her—pale, trembling, already fearful of the worst, and beseeching with tears to know where her sister is—of liberty, and as twin-consort forces her to be his concubine along with her sister. Overcome with anger and thrusting all sense of shame on one side, Philomela threatens of her own accord to betray the deed. Tereus on this draws his sword, seizes and binds her and cuts off her tongue, informs, however, his wife by way of evasion of the death of her sister. Thereupon the sorrowing Procne tears off the fine linen from her shoulders and puts on mourning apparel; she raises an empty tomb and in a mode somewhat out of place, as it happens, laments the lamentable fate of her sister. How then does Philomela meet this? A prisoner, robbed of all speech, of her voice, she bethinks her of craft. With threads of purple she works the news of the crime upon a white texture, and sends the raiment secretly to Procne. The wife reads the heartrending news of her sister; she neither speaks nor weeps; she lives wholly in the image of revenge. It was the time of the festival of Bacchus. Driven forth by the furies of her passionate grief she forces her way to her sister; she tears her from her chamber and carries her off with her away. Then in her own house, while she still is in doubt what terrible act of vengeance she shall exact on Tereus, Itys appears before his mother. She stares upon him with eyes of wildness. How like he is to his father! No further word she utters, but consummates at once the doleful deed. They slay the boy and serve him on his father's table, who partakes eagerly of his own flesh and blood. He then calls for his son, and Procne exclaims that he carries within him that which he calls for; and, as he still looks about him and seeks after him and again asks and calls for him, Philomela sets before his face the bloody head. Then he breaks away from table with an awful cry of anguish, and weeps and calls himself his son's sepulchre, and forthwith makes after the daughters of Pandion with the naked steel. But now supplied with wings they float away from thence, the one into the forest, the other into the roof; and Tereus also, despite all the energy of his sorrow and desire of revenge, is changed into the bird which rears on its crest the comb of feathers, and carries a beak of immoderate projection. The name of the bird is the hoopoe.
On the other hand, we have changes which proceed from a guilt of less significance. As examples, there is Cygnus who became a swan, and Daphne, the first love of Apollo[145], who was changed into the laurel, Clyde into the heliotrope, Narcissus, who despised in his vanity maidens, and sees himself in the watery mirror, and Biblis[146], who was enamoured of her brother, and is, when he scorns her, changed into the spring which even now bears her name and flows beneath the shading oak.