3. THE POSITIVE CONSERVATION OF THE CONDITIONS SET UP THROUGH NEGATION
Despite, then, the victory of the new gods that which came before them still remains in the classical type of art partly preserved and revered in the original form in which we have already recognized it, partly under a transmuted mode. It is only the limited Jewish national god which is unable to tolerate other gods in its company for the reason that it purports as the one god to include everything, although in regard to the definition of its form it fails to pass beyond its exclusiveness wherein the god is merely the God of His own people. Such a god manifests his universality in fact only through his creation of Nature and as Lord of the heavens and the earth. For the rest he remains the god of Abraham, who led his people Israel out of Egypt, gave them laws on Sinai, and divided the land of Canaan among the Jews. And through this narrow identification of him with the Jewish nation he is in a quite peculiar way the god of this folk; and consequently, speaking generally, neither stands in positive consonance with Nature, nor appears truly as absolute Spirit referable back from his determinate character and objectivity to his universality. Consequently this austere, national god is so jealous, and ordains in his jealousy that men shall see elsewhere merely false idols. The Greeks, on the contrary, discovered their gods among other nations and accepted what was foreign among themselves. For the god of classical art has spiritual and bodily individuality and is for this reason not the one and only one, but merely a particular godhead, which, as everything else that shares particularity, has a circle of particularity which surrounds it or in opposition to it as its Other, from which it is the result, and which is qualified to preserve its validity and worth. The process here is analogous to that of the particular divisions of Nature. Although the world of vegetation is the truth of the geological image of Nature, the animal again the higher truth of the vegetable, yet the mountains and the flooded land persist as the solid basis of trees, shrubs, and flowers, which in their turn do not lose their existence alongside the world of animals.
(a) The earliest form under which among the Greeks we come upon this ancient residue, are the Mysteries. The Greek Mysteries were nothing secret in the sense that the Greek nation was not in a general way aware of their content. On the contrary, the majority of the Athenians and a large number of foreigners were among the initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries; but they were not permitted to speak of that in which they had been instructed through initiation. In our own times people have been at great pains to discover more nearly the type of conceptions which prevailed in these mysteries, and to investigate the kind of religious services which were used in their celebration. It appears, however, that on the whole there was no extensive wisdom or profound knowledge concealed in the Mysteries. They merely preserved the old traditions, the basis, that is, of what was latterly reconstructed by the genuine type of art, and consequently, so far from containing the true, higher, and more valuable content, rather unfolded that which was of less significance and of inferior rank. Whatever it was, this holiness was not clearly expressed in the mysteries, but merely handed down in its symbolical features. And in fact this character of secrecy and reticence is bound up with the old telluric, sidereal, and Titanic deposit; Spirit alone is the revealed and the self-revealer. Consonant, too, with this it is the symbolical mode of expression which constitutes the other aspect of secrecy in the mysteries, because in symbolism the interpretation remains obscure, and contains a something other than the external image, which it purports to display, in fact offers to the view. In this sense, for example, the mysteries of Demeter and Bacchus were, it is true, spiritually interpreted, and contained a profounder sense. The form of the same remained quite externally isolate from this content, so that it was impossible clearly to disengage it from it. Consequently the Mysteries had very little influence over art; for though we are told of Aeschylus, that he willfully betrayed something which attached to the Demeter mysteries, this merely amounts to an assertion on his part that Artemis had been the daughter of Ceres, which is not very profound wisdom after all.
(b) But, secondly, we find that the reverence and preservation of the old régime is yet more clearly indicated in actual artistic representation. We have already referred to Prometheus as the chastised Titan who appears in the stage immediately prior to that of genuine art. We meet with him however again as delivered. For as the Earth and as the Sun, so also the fire, which Prometheus brought down to men, that is, the eating of flesh, which he taught them, is an essential feature of human life, a necessary condition for the satisfaction of their needs; and consequently Prometheus is honoured with an enduring recognition[173]. In the Oedipus Colonos of Sophocles we have the words:
χῶρoς μὲν ἱερὸς πᾶς ὅδ ἔστ· ἔχει δέ νιν
σεμνὸς Πoσειδῶν· ἐν δ' ὁ πoρφόρoς θeὸς
Tιτὰν Πρoμηθὲυς[174]
and the scholiast adds that Prometheus was revered in the Academy along with Athene, as Hephaestos was, and a temple was shown in a grove of the goddess, and an ancient pedestal near the entrance, where there was not only an image of Hephaestos, but also one of Prometheus. Prometheus, however, according to the statement of Lysimachides, was represented as primary and more ancient, and he held in his hand a sceptre; Hephaestos as the younger and in the second place, and the altar on the pedestal was shared by both. Prometheus, then, according to the tale, was not obliged to endure his chastisement for ever, but was released from his fetters by Hercules. In this story of his liberation we come across certain remarkable traits. In other words, Prometheus is delivered from his agony because he informs Zeus of the danger which threatens his empire at the hands of the thirteenth descendant. This descendant is Hercules, to whom, we may add in illustration, Poseidon exclaims in the "Birds" of Aristophanes[175], "he will do himself an injury, if he strike a bargain with reference to the transference of the divine headship, for all that Zeus leaves behind him on his decease will most assuredly take place." And, in fact, Hercules is the only man who passed over into Olympus, became a god after being a man, and stands higher than Prometheus, who remained a Titan. Moreover, the overturning of the old race of tyrants is intimately connected with the name of Hercules and the Heraklidae. The Heraklidae break up the power of the old dynasties and royal houses, in which we may remark the selfish desire of personal aggrandizement and lawlessness no less than disregard for their subjects admitted no judicial restraint, and consequently was responsible for the grossest cruelties. Hercules, though himself in the service of a superior lord, overcame the savagery of this despotism.
In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the Eumenides is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In other words, a human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene, stands forth as the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to terminate the collision. The judges, however, give an equal number of votes for condemnation and acquittal, having an equal reverence both for the Eumenides and Apollo; the white pebble of Athene, however, decides the conflict in favour of Apollo. The Eumenides break out in indignation against this decision of Athene; she, however, allays their wrath by promising them worship and altars in the famous grove of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to her people is a protection against the evils[176] which result from the elements of Nature, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they have further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of living seed, and misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on her part, takes beneath her protection the strife of wars and sacred contests. Ina similar way Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only makes Antigone suffer and die, but to a like extent we find that Kreon is punished by the loss of his wife and the death of Haemon, both of whom perish through the death of Antigone.
(c) Thirdly, the ancient gods do not merely preserve their place in juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the natural basis itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives, continuing to made its echo sound in them, if in conformity with the spiritual individuality of classical art, a reverential acceptance.
(α) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the error of conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character and form, as mere allegories of such natural elements. This is not so. In this sense we frequently hear it stated that Helios is the god of the sun, Diana the goddess of the moon, or Neptune the god of the sea. Such a separation, however, between the natural element, as content, and the humanly shaped personification, as form, no less than the external association of both, regarded merely as the masterdom of the god over the natural fact, as we are accustomed to it in the Old Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek conceptions. We never find among the Greeks such an expression as ὁ θεὸς τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης, and so forth, though it is quite certain they would have used with others such an expression for the relation in question, had it been compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.