Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 2 of 3 / Olympus; or, the Religion of the Homeric Age

by W. E. Gladstone

Let us now endeavour to inquire what mental, moral, and physical influences would be likely, in early times, to give form and direction to that alterative process, which the primitive ideas of religion, when removed beyond the precinct of Revelation and the knowledge of the Sacred Records, had to undergo.

This law of decline we may examine, first ideally, according to the influences likely to operate on the course of thought with respect to religion: and then with reference to that which is specifically Greek, by sketching in outline the actual mode of handling the material at command, which resulted in the creation of the Homeric or Olympian system. The first belongs to the metaphysical genesis of the system: the second to its historical formation.

Tendency of primitive religion to decay.

So long as either the Sacred Records, or the Light which supplied them, remained within reach, there were specific means either in operation, or at least accessible, which, as far as their range extended, would serve to check error, whether of practice or speculation, and to clear up uncertainty, as the sundial verifies or corrects the watch. But the stream darkened more and more, as it got farther from the source. The Pagan religion could boast of its unbroken traditions; like some forms of Christianity, and like the government of France until 1789. But its uninterrupted course was really an uninterrupted aberration from the line of truth; and to boast of the evenness of its motion was in effect to boast of the deadness of the conscience of mankind, which had not virtue enough even to disturb progressive degeneracy by occasional reproach. In later times, the Pagan system had its three aspects: it was one thing for the populace, another for statesmen, and a third for philosophers. But in Homer’s time it had suffered no criticism and no analysis: the human self-consciousness was scarcely awakened; introspection had not begun its work. Imagination and affection continually exercised their luxuriant energies in enlarging and developing the system of preternatural being and action. However copiously the element of fiction, nay, of falsehood, entered into it, yet for the masses of mankind it was still subjectively true[13].

All was forward movement. Man had not, as it were, had time to ask himself, is this a lie? or even, whither does it tend? His soul, in those days of infancy, never questioned, always believed. Logical inconsistency, even moral solecism, did not repel it, nor slacken the ardour of its energies in the work of construction: construction of art, construction of manners, construction of polity, construction of religion. This is what we see, in glowing heat, throughout the poems of Homer, and it is perhaps the master key to their highest interest. They show us, in the province we are now considering, heroes earning their title to the Olympian life, mute nature everywhere adjusting herself to the scheme of supernatural impersonations, and religion allied to the human imagination, as closely as it was afterwards by Mahomet wedded to the sword. Everywhere we see that which is properly called myth, in the process of formation. Early mythology is the simple result of the working of the human mind, in a spirit of belief or of credulity, upon the material offered to it by prior tradition, by the physical universe, by the operations of the mind, and by the experience of life.

We may, as follows, accompany the vicious series through which thought might probably be led, with respect to the theory of religion.

If we begin with the true and pure idea of God, it is the idea of a Being infinite in power and intelligence, and though perfectly good, yet good by an unchangeable internal determination of character, and not by the constraint of an external law.

Such was the starting-point, from which the human mind had to run its career of religious belief or speculation. But the maintenance subjectively of the original form of the image in its clearness depended, of course, upon the condition of the observing organ; and that organ, again, depended for its health on the healthiness of the being to whom it belonged. Hence we must look into the nature of man, in order to know what man would think respecting the nature of God.

Downward course of the idea of God.

Now man, the prey of vicious passions, though he holds deeply rooted within himself the witness to an extrinsic and objective law of goodness, which he needs in order to develop what he has of capacity for good, and to bring into subjection the counteracting and rebellious elements, is nevertheless prevailingly under the influence of these last. Hence, in the absence of special and Divine provision for the remedy of his inward disease, although both conscience and also the dispensations of Providence shadow forth to him a law of goodness from without, yet the sense of any internal law of goodness in himself becomes, with the lapse of time, more and more dim and ineffectual.