The religion of Plutarch

by John Oakesmith

The evident sincerity of Plutarch’s piety—his attitude of more than toleration towards everything consecrated by the religious tradition of his age and country—render it impossible for us to regard his system of Dæmonology as a mere concession made by Rationalism to Superstition.[311] But it is not the less clear that Plutarch thinks he has found in the existence of Dæmons not only a means of communication between God and man, but a means of reconciliation between Philosophy and Piety, between Boethus and Serapion. It is a very happy circumstance for a man’s moral progress when he finds Religion and Reason in an agreement so plausible; and when Reason has in some way furnished the very means of agreement—for was it not Plato himself to whom most people had gone for their Dæmonology?—the resulting tendency will have the strength of two harmonizing influences, instead of the halting weakness of a compromise between two mutually conflicting elements.[312] Plato’s Dæmonology is a trick of fence: an ironical pose of sympathetic agreement with popular ideas: but Plutarch does not see this, and can honestly think himself a Platonist, a philosopher, even on a question whose settlement demands philosophical concessions all along the line. It is true that there was one gain for Philosophy which, in Plutarch’s mind, would compensate for even greater sacrifices than it was actually called upon to make: the gain, namely, that each concession to the belief in Dæmons would bring into greater prominence the pure splendour and naked simplicity of the idea of God. As God was withdrawn not only from participation in the ignoble adventures of the Homeric legends, but also from the direct inspiration of oracular and prophetic phrensy, His character would become more worthy of the adoration of the Best, while His omnipotence would be maintained by virtue of the controlling power exercised by Him over all subordinate powers. The gain for a philosophic conception of the Deity was so great in this direction, that we are without surprise in seeing Plutarch proceed still further on the same path. The Dæmons by their divine alloy come into close contact with the nature of God: they perform many functions as interpreters of the Divine Will to humanity. But by virtue of the human element in their character, they are fitted for assuming a personal relationship with individual men, and for becoming the instruments by means of which God enters into those ethical relations with humanity which we have seen described in the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta.” The hint for this aspect of their work and influence Plutarch has found in the Hesiodic people of the golden age, whose death promoted them to the duty of keeping watch over the actions of men. We have seen him already develop this hint in an assertion that the Dæmons, in addition to attending on shrines and religious ceremonies, are endowed with punitive authority over great sinners; and the ethical value of the doctrine is enforced in a passage in which the love of justice, the fear of dishonour, the adoration of virtue, the amenities and graces of civilized life, are intimately associated with the belief that good deities and Dæmons keep a watch upon our career.[313] This belief in an intimate personal relation between men and Dæmons received its most notorious expression in the famous philosophic tradition of the Dæmon of Socrates, and it is naturally in a tract with this title that we have the fullest information respecting Plutarch’s view of the personal connexion between Dæmons and men. The essay, “On the Dæmon of Socrates,” does not, however, contain an exhaustive and scientific discussion of this interesting aspect of Theology similar to that given by Apuleius in his tract with the same designation. At first we find ourselves plunged into the midst of a most dramatically told piece of history—the famous Return of the Theban Exiles under Pelopidas after the treacherous seizure of the Cadmea by the Spartans. In the pauses of the plot the Thebans—averse from such studies as their character is supposed to have been—discourse on these high questions of religious philosophy, and one would almost guess that Plutarch’s subsidiary intention was to indicate, by the broken character of the discussion, the difficulty of attaining to a complete and final view of the subject. Various rational and supernatural explanations of the well-known Socratic expression are suggested, explanations which vary in harmony with the different types of character, or mental attitude, already familiar in Plutarch. Galaxidorus takes the extreme rationalistic view. He rebukes Philosophy for promising to pursue scientific methods in the investigation of “the Good and the Expedient,” and then, in contempt of Reason, falling back upon the gods as principles of action, thus relying on dreams instead of demonstrations.[314] He thinks the Dæmon of Socrates was nothing but the “last straw” which inclines, in one direction or the other, a man whose close and experienced study of every aspect of the case has not enabled him to come to a practical decision. A sneeze might be the grain which turned the balance. Phidolaus will not allow so “great a phenomenon of prophetic inspiration” to be explained by a sneeze, a method of divination which “is only jestingly used by common people in small matters.”[315] A statement of Simmias to the effect that he had heard Socrates often inveighing against those who asserted they had seen a divine vision, while he always listened sympathetically to those who said they had heard a voice, leads to a general surmise that the Dæmon may have been “not an apparition, but the perception of a voice or the interpretation of a word, which had occurred to him under extraordinary circumstances, just as in a dream there is no actual voice, but we have fancies and notions of words, and imagine that we can hear people speaking.”[316] Archidamas, who is narrating the dialogue and its events to Caphisias, here expounds his own views on the subject in the light of the foregoing explanation. He thinks that the voice, or the perception of a voice, which influenced Socrates, was the speech of a Dæmon, who, without the intermediation of audible sound, made this direct appeal to the mind of the pure and passionless sage;[317] it was the influence of a superior intelligence and of a diviner soul, operating upon the soul of Socrates, whose calm and holy temper fitted him “to hear this spiritual speech which, though filling all the air around, is only heard by those whose souls are freed from passion, and its perturbing influence.”[318] Here we have the extreme religious view placed, as usual, in contrast with the sceptical rationalism of Galaxidorus, which has also been indirectly opposed by a narrative of the events, involving the hearing of a Dæmonic voice, connected with the death and burial of a Pythagorean philosopher, Lysis, from which it appears that the Pythagoreans believed that a few men only were under the guardian care of the Dæmons.[319] These two opposing views having been fully expounded by their respective defenders, we should now expect the dialogue to be concluded, in the usual manner of Plutarch, with a compromise between the rationalistic and the religious attitudes. But on this occasion we are disappointed. Plutarch abandons the rôle of rationalist and gives himself up entirely to the view of Dæmonic influence expounded by Archidamas, taking Myth for his guide again whither Philosophy refuses to go. He is careful, however, as in the parallel case in the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta,” at once to still the suspicion of the philosopher and to put the pious reader on his guard, by suggesting a contrast between Myth and Reason before entering on the narrative, a warning which is strongly emphasized by the fact that even Theocritus, “the Soothsayer,” can only claim for Myth, that it is not to be depended upon for scientific accuracy, but only sometimes comes in contact with Truth.[320] The Myth in this case describes the experiences in the Cave of Trophonius of the young philosopher Timarchus, a friend of Socrates, who desired to ascertain the true nature of the “Dæmon” of that great man. The story is told with considerable beauty of imagery, an example of Plutarch’s skill in which we have already seen in the similar story of Thespesius of Soli. The soul of the philosopher leaves his body through the sutures of the cranium. In the subterranean regions he stays two nights and a day, receiving from an invisible spirit much information concerning the afterworld and the beings who inhabit it. The main object of the story seems to be to establish and elucidate the ethical value of the doctrine of Dæmonology, while at the same time we note that a mystical significance now begins to be attached to certain principles long the topic of discussion in the schools. Timarchus is informed by the invisible spirit that there are four principles which operate throughout the universe: the first of Life, the second of Motion, the third of Generation, the fourth of Corruption. The sphere of Life is united to the sphere of Motion by the Monad in the world of invisibility; the sphere of Motion is united to the sphere of Generation by Nous in the Sun; the sphere of Generation is united to the sphere of Corruption by Nature in the Moon. Over each of these unions a Fate presides. The other “islands” are peopled by gods: but the Moon is inhabited by Epichthonian Dæmons, being raised only a little above Styx, which is “the way to Hell.”[321] Styx periodically seizes upon many of these souls in the Moon, and they are swallowed up in Hell. Other souls, at the end of their participation in the life of generation, are received into the Moon from below, except such as are “polluted and unpurified,” these being driven away from her by thunder and lightning to undergo another period of generation. As in the myth of Thespesius, there is a chasm through which the souls pass and repass to and from the life of earth. “What,” asks Timarchus, “are these stars that dart about the chasm, some descending into its depths, others arising from it?” “These are Dæmons,” he is told; and we can only conclude that they are identical with the souls already described as inhabiting the Moon. These Dæmons are incarnated in mankind. Some are altogether dominated by the passions and appetites of the body, others enter into it only partly, retaining the purest portion of their substance unmingled with the human frame. “It is not dragged down, but floats above the top of the head of a man, who is, as it were, sinking in the depths, but whose soul is supported by the connexion so long as it is submissive to this influence, and is not controlled by its bodily passions. The part beneath the waves in the body is called the soul; but the eternal, uncorrupted part is called the mind, by those who think it is within the body.—Those who rightly judge, know it to be outside, and describe it as a Dæmon.” The point of this narrative is emphasized by Theanor, who expresses his belief that “there are very few men whom God honours by addressing his commands directly to them. The souls of such men, freed from the domination of passion and earthly desires, become Dæmons, who act as guardian angels to certain men, whose long-continued struggles after the good excite their attention, and at last obtain their assistance.” Each of these Dæmons loves to help the soul confided to its care, and to save it by its inspirations. The soul who adheres to the Dæmon, and listens to its warnings, attains a happy ending; those who refuse to obey are abandoned by it, and may expect no happiness.[322] “The connexion which attaches the Dæmon to the soul is, as it were, a restraint upon the irrational part thereof. When Reason pulls the chain it gives rise to repentance for the sins which the soul has committed under the influence of passion, shame for illicit and immoderate indulgences, and finally produces a tendency to submit in quiet patience to the better influence of the Dæmon. The condition of absolute submission does not come all at once, but those who have been obedient to their Dæmon from the very beginning constitute the class of prophets and god-inspired men.” The Dæmons have here assigned to them a protective care of humanity; they assist the souls who struggle after goodness, and desert those who refuse to obey their injunctions. A few good men, specially honoured by the deity, may themselves become Dæmons, and act as guardian angels to others. Plutarch repeats this view more systematically elsewhere, giving it a more general application. “It is maintained by some that ... just as water is perceived to be produced from earth, from water, air, and from air, fire, in a constantly ascending process, so also the better souls undergo a transformation from men to heroes, from heroes to dæmons, and from dæmons, some few souls, being purified through prolonged practice of virtue, are brought to a participation in the divine nature itself.”[323]

This examination of the story of Timarchus lends a strong support to the statement already made respecting Plutarch’s use of myth. In the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta” we saw that he could not accept as a subject of rational demonstration the theory of rewards and punishments in a future life; but so convinced is he of the ethical value of that belief that he has recourse to a most solemn myth, which he clearly hopes will operate for goodness through the imagination if not through the intellect. The myth embodied in the “De Dæmonio Socratis” has a similar origin and an identical aim. How important to a man in his efforts after Goodness to know that he is under the observation of a Being whose half-human, half-divine nature, fits him equally to feel sympathy and administer aid! That is an aspect of Plutarch’s teaching which requires no emphasis to-day.... With the Plutarchean doctrine of Dæmons is also involved the sublimely moral notion of eternal endeavour after a higher and more perfect goodness. The human being who earnestly strives to be good within the limits of his present opportunities will have a larger sphere of activity thrown open to him as a Dæmon in the Afterworld. The human soul transfigured into the strength and splendour of this higher nature has work to perform which may develop such qualities as will bring their owner into closer proximity with the Highest Divine. The doctrine of Dæmons, as expounded by Plutarch, involves the profound moral truth that there is no limit to the perfectibility of human nature; and we can surely forgive much that is irrational and fantastic in a scheme which embodies so effective an inspiration to goodness.[324]

But the value and moral dignity of any principle depend upon the method of its interpretation and application. That sense of personal dependence upon a benevolent supernatural power which Plutarch associates with the teachings of Dæmonology may be identical with the purest and loftiest religion, or may degenerate into the meanest and most degrading superstition, according to its development in the mind of the individual believer. If this intercourse is regarded as spiritual only, the communion of soul with soul in the “sessions of sweet, silent thought,” high religious possibilities issue which no form of faith can dispense with. Any attempt to degrade this intercourse to material ends, or to appeal to it through material channels, involves recourse to magical rites, and superstitious practices of the grossest description. It is necessary, too, that even where there is no recourse to materialistic avenues of access to the spiritual world, the mind should cultivate a belief in the benevolence of the Higher Powers so that it may maintain a rational dignity and fearlessness in its communion with them. Plutarch is aware of these clangers. He knows that Dæmonology, and even Theology, may involve Superstition, and he takes pains to close those avenues to its approach, which a misunderstanding of the subject, a mistaken mental attitude towards it, may easily throw widely open. He seldom misses an opportunity of inculcating the proper attitude of mind to assume in face of questions of Religion, or of placing such questions in an atmosphere of clear and rational daylight, which is equally unlike the dim gloom of Superstition, and the blinding glare of Atheism. In a word, he continues to make Reason his Mystagogue to Religion. Polemically, as against the Epicureans, he is inclined to argue that Atheism is an unmixed evil, since it deprives mankind of Hope, Courage, and Pleasure, and leaves us no refuge in God from the sorrows and troubles of life.[325] He adds that Superstition should be removed as a dimming rheum from before our eyes; but, if that is impossible, we must not knock the eye out for the sake of removing the rheum, or turn the sight of Faith to the blindness of Atheism in order to destroy false ideas of the Deity. Although he admits that there are some men for whom it is best to be in fear of God; although he knows that a much greater number combine with their honour and worship of the Deity a certain superstitious fear and dread of Him; yet he insists most strongly that these feelings are totally eclipsed by the hope and joy that attend their communion with God.[326] He draws a beautiful picture of the happiness accompanying participation in divine services, asserting, in a lofty strain of religious feeling, that it is from a recognition of the presence of God in these services that the sense of happiness proceeds. “He that denies the Providence of God has no share in this exceeding joy. For it is not abundance of wine and well-cooked meats that gladden our hearts in a religious festival; it is our good hope and belief that God Himself is graciously present and approving our acts.” Without this conviction, he insists, the religious value of the ceremony is utterly lost.[327] To approach the gods with cheerfulness and courage and openness is the soul of Plutarch’s religion, and he is faithful to this principle on the most diverse occasions. Fond of Literature as he is, there are many famous passages of classical verse which he will not permit youthful students to carry away into their lives as factors in ethical progress until they have been harmonized with the claims of a rational criticism. Thus he quotes a verse of Sophocles—“God is a cause of fear to prudent men”—and insists that “fear” should be changed to “hope,” lest those should be justified who regard “with suspicion and dread as the cause of injury the power that is the principle and origin of all good.”[328] And when dealing with the sanctities of domestic life he insists that one important element of conjugal happiness lies in the avoidance of separate worship on the part of the wife, and in a closing of the door on superfluous ministrations and the practices of foreign superstition. “For,” says he, “there is no god who takes delight in stolen and secret sacrifices on the part of a wife.”[329] These passages, selected from various portions of Plutarch’s ethical teachings, show how strongly it is his practice to emphasize a note of cheerful and open courage in worship as an essential part of religious belief. But it is in the well-known essay “on Superstition” that he most thoroughly expounds this aspect of his philosophy, and no endeavour to understand Plutarch’s mental attitude in face of a problem which always affects humanity would be successful without a careful analysis of that treatise. The “De Iside et Osiride” attempts to safeguard the mind from the attacks of Superstition on the side of the Intellect, as the “De Superstitione” does on the side of the Imagination, and the two tracts have therefore an organic connexion which renders it necessary to treat them together as expounding different aspects of the same question.

CHAPTER IX.

Relation between Superstition and Atheism: Atheism an intellectual error: Superstition an error involving the passions: the De Superstitione—Moral fervour of Plutarch’s attack on Superstition—His comparative tolerance of Atheism—The greatest safeguard against both alike consists in an intellectual appreciation of the Truth—The De Iside et Osiride—The Unity underlying national differences of religious belief.

“The profoundest, the most essential and paramount theme of human interest,” says Goethe, “is the eternal conflict between Atheism and Superstition.”[330] Plutarch’s tract, “De Superstitione,” is a classical sermon on this text, although in his presentment of the subject the mutual antagonism of the two principles receives less emphasis than the hostility which both alike direct against the interests of true Religion. He has no sympathy with any notion similar to that current since his days, in many religious minds, that Superstition is but a mistaken form of Piety, deserving tenderness rather than reprehension, and he maintains that absolute disbelief in God is less mischievous in its effects upon human conduct and character than its opposite extreme of superstitious devotion. With this hint of Plutarch’s point of view we proceed to a brief analysis of the tract in which his view is mainly expounded.

At the very commencement he describes the two evils as springing from an identical source. Ignorance of the Divine Nature has a twofold aspect: in people of stern dispositions it appears as Atheism; in minds of more yielding and submissive mould it shows itself as Superstition. Merely intellectual errors, such as the Epicurean Theory of Atoms and the Void, or the Stoic notion that virtue and vice are corporeal substances, are unaccompanied by any passionate mental disturbance: they are silly blunders, but not worth tears. But is a man convinced that wealth is the highest good? or does he regard virtue as a mere empty name?—these are errors that cannot be distinguished from moral disorders. Atheism is an intellectual error: Superstition a moral disorder—an intellectual error “touched with emotion.”[331] The moral disorder of Superstition is depicted in a few paragraphs of striking power, opulent with historical and literary allusion. The effect of the description is to leave a conviction of the utter inability of the superstitious man to free any portion of his life from the influence of his awful fear of the gods. “He does not dread the sea who never sails; nor he a war who never goes to camp; nor he a robber who keeps his home; nor he an informer who has no wealth; nor he envy who lives retired; nor he an earthquake who dwells in Gaul; nor he a thunderbolt who inhabits Æthiopia. But they who fear the gods fear all things—land, sea, air, sky, darkness, light, sound, silence, dream.[332] By day as well as night they live in prey to dreadful dreams, and fall a ready victim to the first fortune-telling cheat they come upon. They dip themselves in the sea: they pass all day in a sitting posture: they roll themselves on dunghills: cover themselves with mud: keep Sabbaths:[333] cast themselves on their faces: stand in strange attitudes, and adopt strange methods of adoration.—Those who thought it important to maintain the recognized laws of Music, used to instruct their pupils to ‘sing with a just mouth’; and we maintain that those who approach the gods should address them with a just mouth and a righteous, lest, in our anxiety to have the tongue of the victim pure and free from fault, we twist and defile our own with strange barbarian names and expressions, and thus disgrace the dignified piety of our national Faith.”[334] Not only is this life full of torture to the Superstitious, but their terrified imagination leaps the limits of the Afterworld, and adds to death the conception of deathless woes. Hell-gate yawns for them; streams of flame and Stygian cataracts threaten them; the gloom is horrid with spectral shapes, and piteous sights and sounds, with judges and executioners, and chasms crowded with a myriad woes.

The condition of the Atheist is far to be preferred. It was better for Tiresias to be blind than it was for Athamas and Agave to see their children in the shape of lions and stags. The Atheist does not see God at all: the superstitious man sees Him terrible instead of benign, a tyrant instead of a father, harsh instead of tender. The troubles of actual life are assigned by the Atheist to natural causes, to defects in himself or his circumstances; and he endeavours to mitigate or remove them by greater care. But to the victim of Superstition his bodily ailments, his pecuniary misfortunes, his children’s deaths, his public failures, are the strokes of a god or the attacks of a dæmon, and cannot therefore be remedied by natural means, which would have the appearance of opposition to the will of God.[335] Hence light misfortunes are often allowed to become fatal disasters.[336] Thus, Midas was frightened to death by his dreams; Aristodemus of Messene committed suicide because the soothsayers had alarmed him about a trifling omen;[337] Nicias lost his life and his great army because he was afraid when a shadow crept over the moon. Let us pray to the gods, but let us not neglect reasonable human endeavour. “While the Greeks were praying for Ajax, Ajax was putting on his armour; for God is the hope of bravery, not the pretext for cowardice.”[338] Participation in religious ceremonies, which should be the most cheerful and happy act of life, is an additional cause of dread to the Superstitious, whose case is worse than that of the Atheist who smiles sarcastically at the whole business. The Atheist, true, is guilty of impiety: but is not Superstition more open to this charge? “I, for my part, would greatly prefer that men should say about me that there was not, and never had been, such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say that Plutarch is a fickle, irascible, vindictive fellow, who will pay you out for not inviting him to supper, or for omitting to call upon him, or for passing him in the street without speaking to him, by committing a violent assault upon you, giving one of your children a thorough caning, or turning a beast into your cornfield.”[339] The fact of the matter is, that the Atheist believes there are no gods, while the superstitious man wishes there were none;[340] the former is an Atheist pure and simple, while the latter is an Atheist who professes to believe because he has not the moral courage to utter his secret desires. And, as in the individual mind Superstition involves Atheism, so historically the latter has developed out of the former. The Epicureans were Atheists, not because they did not perceive the splendour and perfection of the universe, but because they desired to deliver humanity from the thraldom which Superstition had cast about it—from its ridiculous passions and actions, its spells of speech and motion, its magic and witchcraft, its charmed circles and drum-beating, its impure purifications and its filthy cleansings, its barbaric and unlawful penances and its self-torturings at holy shrines. If these practices are pleasant to the gods, mankind is no better off than if the administration of the world were in the hands of the Typhons or the Giants.