Myth and Science / An Essay

by Tito Vignoli

It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when human thought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, the scientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world is shown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yet it shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive Hellenic speculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problem of creation. In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of the void or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of the One, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; of productive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; of conceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleatic philosophies, which all converge into the one. All belong to the same Aryan race.

The Vedic composition represents in Dyâvâprthivî the close connection between the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as the active and creative principle, the other as that which is passive and fertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not only the first philosophies, but successive theories and systems. The worship of water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and they then became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolution which we have laid down. In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta, the waters are collectively invoked by their special name âpas, and they are termed the mothers, the divine, which contain the amrta or ambrosia, and all healing powers. In Agni and its Vedic transformations we clearly trace the worship of fire, and its cosmic value. The Vedic worship of the air is Vâyu, from va, to breathe, who is associated with the higher gods, and especially with Indra, ruler of the atmosphere: next comes Rudra, the god of storms, accompanied by the Maruti, the winds; and in the Zendavesta the air is invoked as an element. Hence we see that a more rational conception of the genesis of the world succeeds to these earlier representations and personifications of the elements; representations which in another form endure throughout the course of human thought.

It is now necessary to consider the other period of the mythical and scientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato and Aristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two great currents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more important to consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythical evolution of the earlier representations has full and clear expression; while in the Aristotelian philosophy an element of dissolution is already at work which throws some light on the illusions of the Platonic school.

We must bear in mind that the spontaneous and even the reflective intellectual faculty gradually assimilated special and independent myths into comprehensive types, which referred to all natural objects. Next, the incarnation of spirits produced the earliest forms of polytheism, and these were slowly classified into more concentric circles, and finally into a single hierarchical system. Owing to the attitude and ethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of their Olympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it was impersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of the world, of gods and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, was carried on in all races. Hence it resulted that every object had a type, its god; everything was typically individuated in an anthropomorphic entity in such a way that there arose a natural dualism between the phenomena, facts, and cosmic orders on the one side, and on the other the hierarchy of gods who represented them and over whom they presided. The Hellenic philosophies prior to Plato, both physical and intellectual, and also the psychological morality of Socrates, had already accomplished the first evolution of this typical stage of universal polytheism, substituting for anthropomorphic representations physical and intellectual principles and powers. Thought was educated in its inward exercise, as well as in the observation of facts and ideal representations. But—and this constituted the first evolution of anthropomorphism in general—these powers all expressed the thing in its general and phenomenal form; it was endowed with merely zoomorphic force, and the world was regarded as physiologically living.

Plato, impelled by the foregoing evolution, and by the large and exquisitely æsthetic character of his genius, accomplished the second and altogether intellectual stage of evolution by inverting the problem; he affirmed that the final and intrinsic result of the exercise of thought was its earlier and eternal essence, extrinsic and objective. The types which were first fetishes and then polytheistic were transformed into the physical and intellectual principles of the world, divested of all mythical and extrinsic form as far as their material organization was concerned. Plato held that such types were really ideal, as in fact they had unconsciously been from the first; that is, that it was simply a logical conception of species and genera which is natural to human thought; a conception necessary for the spontaneous as well as for the reflex and scientific processes of thought. From the type, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea of each special object was easy, since each object has its psychical representation in the mind. Special and specific ideas were then arranged in a certain order, and those which are more general in a concentric and systematic classification; this had been also the case in the earlier polytheistic system, since the process of the intelligence naturally arranges all its representations. But he did not stop here, nor indeed was it possible for him to do so.

We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, but their relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty; these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively perceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motion of the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and then embodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that in primitive thought these relations involved an active entity, and were in a word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning, and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the ideality of these relations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence he was constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm that an idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the general construction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but an active, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individual and a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understanding of ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According to Plato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a general character, like those which embrace all ideal relations whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse of thought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apex of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically the Idea, or God. On turning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas are the eternal model (paradigm) according to which things are made; these are the images (idoli) of which the others are the imperfect copies (mimesi). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, a figure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in the sphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined together by higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on to the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good which includes and sums up the whole.

Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become the body by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it; matter considered in itself is the indefinite (apeiron), the indefinable (aoriston), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal with ideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had its origin, the image of the invisible deity, God in power, the living organism (Zoon), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul. The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautiful which can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also the most perfect motion.

The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixed stars, then the planets, then the earth, created deities; the earth produced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work and object of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourish him, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, the microcosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in a body. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head, the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. The breast is the seat of generous passions, while the bestial appetites are found in the belly and intestines.

The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortal elements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality of the soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life and matter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate, equivocal being, the demiurgos. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of the intelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to the monistic theory of the Eleatics.

In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of the elements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical forms correspond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. He divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers are themselves demoniacs.