[78] In justice to the old Greek Theology which, as it really was, has enough to answer for, it must be remarked that its Demonology, or belief in the powers of subordinate divinities—in the first instance merely the internunciaries, or mediators, or angels between Heaven and Earth—was a very different thing from the Diabolism of Christian theology, a fact which, perhaps, can be adequately recognised by those only who happen to be acquainted with the history of that most widely-spread and most fearful of all superstitions. Necessarily, from the vague and, for the most part, merely secular character of the earlier theologies, the infernal horrors, with the frightful creed, tortures, burnings, &c., which characterised the faith of Christendom, were wholly unknown to the religion of Apollo and of Jupiter.
[79] Neo or New-Platonism may be briefly defined as a spiritual development of the Socratic or Platonic teaching. In the hands of some of its less judicious and rational advocates it tended to degenerate into puerile, though harmless, superstition. With the superior intellects of a Plotinus, Porphyry, Longinus, Hypatia, or Proclus, on the other hand, it was, in the main at least, a sublime attempt at the purification and spiritualisation of the established orthodox creed. It occupied a position midway between the old and the new religion, which was so soon to celebrate its triumph over its effete rival. That Christianity, on its spiritual side (whatever the ingratitude of its later authorities), owes far more than is generally acknowledged to both the old and newer Platonism, is sufficiently apparent to the attentive student of theological history.
[80] Author of a Treatise on the Abandonment of the Flesh Diet, 1709. He died in the year 1737.
[81] Voltaire might have added the examples of the Greek Coenobites. There is at least one celebrated and long-established religious community, in the Sinaitic peninsula, which has always rigidly excluded all flesh from their diet. Like the community of La Trappe, these religious Vegetarians are notoriously the most free from disease and most long-lived of their countrymen.
[82] Article Viande (Dict. Phil.) In other passages in his writings the philosopher of Ferney, we may here remark, expresses his sympathy with the humane diet. See especially his Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations (introduction), and his Romance of La Princesse de Babylone.
[83] Οἰκειώσις strictly means adoption, admission to intimacy and family life, or “domestication.”
[84] The founder of the new Academy at Athens, and the vigorous opponent of the Stoics.
[85] That unreasoning arrogance of human selfishness, which pretends that all other living beings have come into existence for the sole pleasure and benefit of man, has often been exposed by the wiser, and therefore more humble, thinkers of our race. Pope has well rebuked this sort of monstrous arrogance:—
“Has God, thou fool, worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?