'And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth' (Hosea ii. 15).—The case of pathos, a person coming back to places, recalling the days of youth after a long woe, is quite unknown to the ancients—nay, the maternal affection itself, though used inevitably, is never consciously reviewed as an object of beauty.
Duties arise everywhere, but—do not mistake—not under their sublime form as duties. I claim the honour to have first exposed a fallacy too common: duties never did, never will, arise save under Christianity, since without it the sense of a morality lightened by religious motive, aspiring to holiness, not only of act, but of motive, had not before it even arisen. It is the pressure of society, its mere needs and palpable claims, which first calls forth duties, but not as duties; rather as the casting of parts in a scenical arrangement. A duty, under the low conception to which at first it conforms, is a rôle, no more; it is strictly what we mean when we talk of a part. The sense of conscience strictly is not touched under any preceding system of religion. It is the daughter of Christianity. How little did Wordsworth seize the fact in his Ode: 'Stern Daughter of the Voice of God' is not enough; the voice of God is the conscience; and neither has been developed except by Christianity.
The conscience of a pagan was a conscience pointing to detection: it pointed only to the needs of society, and caused fear, shame, anxiety, only on the principles of sympathy; that is, from the impossibility of releasing himself from a dependence on the reciprocal feelings—the rebound, the dependence on the resentments of others.
Morals.—Even ordinary morals could have little practical weight with the ancients: witness the Roman juries and Roman trials. Had there been any sense of justice predominant, could Cicero have hoped to prevail by such defences as that of Milo and fifty-six others, where the argument is merely fanciful—such a Hein-gespinst as might be applauded with 'very good!' 'bravo!' in any mock trial like that silly one devised by Dean Swift.
The slowness and obtuseness of the Romans to pathos appears à priori in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre; secondly, à posteriori, in the fact that their theatre was put out; and also, à posteriori, in the coarseness of their sensibilities to real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which proceeded even so far as pinching to elicit a cry, is beyond easy credit to men of their time.
The narrow range of the Greek intellect, always revolving through seven or eight centuries about a few memorable examples—from the Life of Themistocles to Zeno or Demosthenes.
The Grecian glories of every kind seem sociable and affable, courting sympathy. The Jewish seem malignantly αυταρκεις.
But just as Paganism respected only rights of action, possession, etc., Christianity respects a far higher scale of claims, viz., as to the wounds to feelings, to deep injury, though not grounded in anything measurable or expoundable by external results. Man! you have said that which you were too proud and obstinate to unsay, which has lacerated some heart for thirty years that had perhaps secretly and faithfully served you and yours. Christianity lays hold on that as a point of conscience, if not of honour, to make amends, if in no other way, by remorse.
As to the tears of Œdipus in the crises. I am compelled to believe that Sophocles erred as regarded nature; for in cases so transcendent as this Greek nature and English nature could not differ. In the great agony on Mount Œta, Hercules points the pity of his son Hyllus to the extremity of torment besieging him on the humiliating evidence of the tears which they extorted from him. 'Pity me,' says he, 'that weep with sobs like a girl: a thing that no one could have charged upon the man' (pointing to himself); 'but ever without a groan I followed out to the end my calamities.' Now, on the contrary, on the words of the oracle, that beckoned away with impatient sounds Œdipus from his dear sublime Antigone, Œdipus is made to weep.
But this is impossible. Always the tears arose, and will arise, on the relaxation of the torment and in the rear of silent anguish on its sudden suspense, amidst a continued headlong movement; and also, in looking back, tears, unless checked, might easily arise. But never during the torment: on the rack there are no tears shed, and those who suffered on the scaffold never yet shed tears, unless it may have been at some oblique glance at things collateral to their suffering, as suppose a sudden glimpse of a child's face which they had loved in life.