Greece and Babylon

by Lewis Richard Farnell

CHAPTER I.
Inaugural Lecture.

The newly-elected holder of a University professorship or lectureship, before embarking on the course of special discussion that he has selected, may be allowed or expected to present some outlined account of the whole subject that he represents, and to state beforehand, if possible, the line that he proposes to pursue in regard to it. This is all the more incumbent on me, as I have the honour to be the first Wilde Lecturer in Natural and Comparative Religion—the first, that is, who has been officially charged by the University to give public teaching in the most modern and one of the most difficult fields of study, one that has already borne copious fruit, and will bear more in the future. I appreciate highly the honour of such a charge, and I take this opportunity of expressing my deep sense of the indebtedness of our University and of all students of this subject to Dr. Wilde for his generous endowment of this branch of research, which as yet has only found encouragement in a few Universities of Europe, America, and Japan. I feel also the responsibility of my charge. Years of study have shown me the magnitude of the subject, the pitfalls that here—more, perhaps, than in other fields—beset the unwary, and the multiplicity of aspects from which it may be studied. Having no predecessor, I cannot follow, but may be called upon rather to set, a precedent.

One guidance, at least, I have—namely, the expressed wishes of the founder of this post. He has formulated them in regard to Comparative Religion in such a way that I feel precluded, in handling this part of the whole field, from what may be called the primitive anthropology of religion. I shall not, therefore, deal directly with the embryology of the subject, with merely savage religious psychology, ritual, or institutions. It is not that I do not feel myself the fascination of these subjects of inquiry, and their inevitableness for one who wishes wholly to understand the whole of any one of the higher world-religions.

But we have in the University one accomplished exponent of these themes in Mr. Marett, and until recently we have been privileged to possess Professor Tylor; and Dr. Wilde has made his wishes clear that the exposition of Comparative Religion should be mainly an elucidation and comparison of the higher forms and ideas in the more advanced religions. And I can cheerfully accept this limitation, as for years I have been occupied with the minute study of the religion of Greece, in which one finds much, indeed, that is primitive, even savage, but much also of religious thought and religious ethic, unsuspected by former generations of scholars, that has become a rich inheritance of our higher culture. He who wishes to succeed in this new field of arduous inquiry should have studied at least one of the higher religions of the old civilisation au fond, and he must have studied it by the comparative method. He may then make this religion the point of departure for wide excursions into outlying tracts of the more or less adjacent religious systems, and he will be the less likely to lose himself in the maze and tangle of facts if he can focus the varying light or doubtful glimmer they afford upon the complex set of phenomena with which he is already familiar.

And the Greek religion serves better than any other that I know for such a point of departure, the influences being so numerous that radiated upon it. It had its own special inheritance, which it fruitfully developed, from the North, from its proto-Aryan past, and which we shall be able to define with greater clearness when comparative religion has done its work upon the religious records of the early Aryan peoples. Also, the Hellene had many intimate points of contact with earlier and alien peoples of the ancient Mediterranean culture whom he conquered and partly absorbed, or with whom he entered into intellectual or commercial relations. Therefore the religions of the Minoan Age, of the Anatolian peoples, of Egypt, and finally of Babylon and Persia, come inevitably to attract the student of the Hellenic.

As far, then, as I can see at present, I may have to limit my attention in the lecture-courses of these three years during which I fill this post, to the phenomena of the Mediterranean area, and these are more than one man can thoroughly elucidate in a lifetime, as the manifold activity in various departments of this field, attested by the Transactions of our recent Congress of the History of Religions, will prove to those who read them. And I shall endeavour in the future to follow out one main inquiry through a short series of lectures, as this is the best method for a reasoned statement of consecutive thought. But I propose in this lecture to sketch merely in outlines the salient features of some of the religions of the Mediterranean area, and hope thereby to indicate the main problems which the student of comparative religion must try to solve, or the leading questions he must ask, and thus, perhaps, to be able to suggest to others as well as to myself special lines of future research and discussion.

What, then, are the questions which naturally arise when we approach the study of any religion that has advanced beyond the primitive stage? We wish to discover with definiteness what is the idea of divinity that it has evolved, in what forms and with what concepts this idea is expressed—whether, for instance, the godhead is conceived as a vague “numen,” or as a definite personality with complex character and functions, and whether it is imagined or presented to sense in anthropomorphic forms.

The question whether the religion is monotheistic or polytheistic is usually answered at a glance, unless the record is unusually defective; but in the case of polytheism careful inquiry is often needed to answer the other morphological questions that press themselves upon us, whether the polytheism is an organised system of co-ordinated and subordinated powers or a mere medley of uncorrelated deities. If the former, whether the unifying tendency has developed in the direction of monotheism or pantheism.

Again, the study of the attributes and functions ascribed and the titles attached to the deity will enable us to answer the questions concerning his relation to the world of Nature, to the social sphere of law, politics, and morality; and in this quest we may hope to gain fruitful suggestions concerning the interaction of religion, social organisation, and ethics. We shall also wish to know whether the religion is dogmatic or not—that is to say, whether it lays stress on precise theological definitions; whether it claims to possess sacred books or a revelation; whether it contains the idea of faith as a cardinal virtue. Further, it is always interesting to consider whether it has engendered a cosmogony, a theory of the cosmos, its origin, maintenance, and possible dissolution; and whether it is instinctively favourable or antagonistic to the growth of the scientific spirit, to the free activity of the intellect; and, finally, whether it gives prominence to the belief in the immortality of the soul and to the doctrine of posthumous rewards and punishments.

There are also certain special questions concerning the nature and powers of the divinity that are found to be of importance. The distinction of sex in the anthropomorphic religions, the paramountcy of the god or the goddess, is observed to produce a singular effect in religious psychology, and may be associated with fundamental differences in social institutions, with the distinction, for instance, between a patrilinear and a matrilinear society. As regards the powers attributed to the divinity, we may endeavour to discern certain laws of progress or evolution in progressive societies—an evolution, perhaps, from a more material to a more spiritual conception, or, again, from a belief in divinities finite and mortal to a dogma that infinity, omniscience, and immortality are their necessary attributes. On this line of inquiry we are often confronted with the phenomenon of the death of the god or goddess, and no single fact in the history of religions is of more interest and of more weight. Also, we frequently find an antagonism between malevolent and benevolent powers, whence may arise a philosophic conception of dualism in Nature and the moral world.