Chapter VI: Part 6

"I can well understand that the Spartans, who are quite unwilling to vest any real power whatever in either their kings, their assembly, their senate, or their minor officials, are consequently compelled to vest inordinate power in their few Ephors, and in the constantly practised extreme self-control of each individual Spartan. In a commonwealth like Sparta, where the commune is allowed very little, or no, power; where there are neither generals, directors of police, powerful priests or princes, nor any other incumbents of great coercive powers; in such a community the individual himself must needs be his own policeman, his own priest, prince, general, and coercive power. This he does by being a vegetarian, a strict Puritan, teetotaller, melancholist, and universal killer of joy."

Here Pericles was interrupted by the suave voice of Selden, who, in pure Attic, corroborated the foregoing statements by a reference to the people called Hebrews in Palestine. "These men," Selden said, "were practically at all times so fond of liberty that they could not brook any sort of government in the form of officials, policemen, soldiers, princes, priests, or lords whatever. In consequence of which they introduced a system of individual self-control called ritualism, by means of which each Hebrew tied himself down with a thousand filigree ties as to eating, drinking, sleeping, merrymaking, and, in short, as to every act of ordinary life. So that, O Pericles, the Hebrews are one big Orphic Association of extremists, less formidable than the Spartans, but essentially similar to them."

Selden had scarcely finished his remarks, when Alcibiades, encouraged by a smile from Plato, joined the discussion, and, looking at Pericles, exclaimed:

"My revered relative, I have listened to your observations with close attention; and I have also, in my rambles through this country, met a great number of men and women. It seems to me that but for their Orphic Associations, which here some people call Societies of Cranks and Faddists, the population of this realm would have one civil war after the other.

"Surely you all remember how, in my youth, misunderstanding as I did the Orphic and mystery-craving nature of man, I made fun of it, and was terribly punished for it at the hands of Hermes, a god far from being as great as Zeus, Apollo, or Dionysus. Little did I know at that time that the exuberance of vitality, which I, owing to my wealth and station in life, could gratify by gorgeous chariot races at Olympia under the eyes of all the Hellenes, was equally strong, but yet unsatisfied, in the average and less dowered citizens of my State.

"My chequered experience has taught me that no sort of people can quite do without Orphic mysteries, and when I sojourned among the Thracians, I saw that those barbarians, fully aware of the necessity of Mysteries and Orphic Trances, had long ago introduced festivals at which their men and women could give free vent to their subconscious, vague, yet powerful chthonic craving for impassioned daydreaming and revelry. They indulge in wild dances on the mountains, at night, invoking the gods of the nether world, indulging freely in the wildest form of boundless hilarity, and rivalling in their exuberance the mad sprouting of trees and herbs in spring.

"You Laconian maidens, usually so proud and cold and Amazonian, I call upon you to say whether in your strictly regulated polity of Sparta you do not, at times, rove in the wildest fashion over the paths, ravines, and clefts of awful Mount Taygetus, in reckless search of the joy of frantic vitality which your State ordinarily does not allow you to indulge in? And you women of Argos, are you too not given to wild rioting at stated times? Have I not watched you in your religious revivals of fierce joy?"

Both the Laconian and Argive women admitted the fact, and one of them asked: "Do the women of this country not observe similar festivals? I pity them if they don't."

And a Theban girl added: "The other day we passed over Snowdon and other mounts in a beauteous land which they call Wales. It is much like our own holy Mount Kithæron. Why, then, do the women of this country not rove, in honour of the god, over the Welsh mountains, free and unobserved, as we do annually over wild Kithæron? They would do it gracefully, for I have noticed that they run much better than they walk, and they would swing the _thyrsus_ in their hand with more elegance than the sticks they use in their games."

At that moment there arose from the haze and clouded mystery of the neighbouring woods a rocket of sounds, sung by female voices and soon joined in the distance by a chorus of men. The company on the lawn suddenly stopped talking, and at the bidding of the Delphic archon, whom they called Trichas, they all went in search of ivy, and, having found it, wreathed themselves with it. The music, more and more passionate, came nearer and nearer.

From my place I could slightly distinguish, in mid-air, a fast travelling host of women in light dresses, swinging the _thyrsus_, dancing with utter freedom of beautiful movement, and singing all the time songs in praise of Dionysus, the god of life and joy.

Trichas solemnly called upon us to close our eyes, and he intoned a _pæan_ of strange impressiveness, imploring the god to pardon our presence and to countenance us hereafter as before.

But the Laconian, Theban, and Argive maidens left us, and soaring into air, as it were, joined the host of revelling women.

After a time the music subsided far away, and nothing could be heard but the melodious soughing of the wind through the lank alder-trees.

* * * * *

Then, at a sign of Trichas, Plato took the word and said:

"You are aware, my friends, that whatever I have taught in my Athenian days regarding the punishment of our faults at the hands of the Powers of the Netherworld, all that has been amply visited upon me in the shape of commentaries written on my works by learned teachers, after the fashion of savages who tattoo the beautiful body of a human being.

"I may therefore say that I have at last come to a state of purification and castigation which allows one to see things in their right proportion. Thus, with regard to this curious country in which we are just at present, I cannot but think that while there is much truth in what all of you have remarked, yet you do not seem to grasp quite clearly the essence, or, as we used to say, the οὑσἱα of the whole problem.

"This nation, like all of us Hellenes, has many centuries ago made up its mind to keep its political liberty intact and undiminished. For that purpose it always tried to limit, and in the last three hundred years actually succeeded in limiting, or even destroying, most of the coercive powers of the State, the Church, the nobility, the army. Selden not improperly compared them to the Jews. And as in the case of the Jews, so in the case of the English, the lack of the coercive powers of State, Church, nobility, and army inevitably engendered coercive powers of an individual or private character.

"This is called, in a general word, Puritanism. Our Spartans, who would not tolerate public coercive corporate powers any more than do the English, were likewise driven into an individual Puritanism, called their ἁγωγἡ, which likewise consisted of fanatic teetotalism, _mutisme_, anti-intellectualism, and other common features.

"This inevitable Puritanism in England assumed formerly what they call a Biblical form; now it feeds on teetotalism--that is, it has become liquid Puritanism. I have it on the most unquestionable authority, that the contemporary Britons are, in point of consumption of spirits and wine, the most moderate consumers of all the European nations; and the average French person, for example, drinks 152 times more wine per annum than the average Englishman. Even in point of beer, the average Belgian, for instance, drinks twice as much as the average Englishman; while the average Dane drinks close on five times more spirits than the average Briton.

"Yet all these facts will convert no one. For, since the Puritan wants Puritanism and not facts, he can be impressed only by inducing him to adopt another sort of Puritanism, but never by facts.

"Accordingly, they have introduced Christian Science, or one of the oldest Orphic fallacies, which the Mediæval Germans used to call 'to pray oneself sound.' They have likewise inaugurated anti-vivisectionism, vegetarianism, anti-tobacconism, Sabbatarianism, and a social class system generally, which combines all the features of all the kinds of Puritanism.

"We in Athens divided men only on lines of the greater or lesser political rights we gave them; but we never drew such lines in matters social and purely human. The freest Athenian readily shook hands with a _metic_ or denizen; and we ate all that was eatable and good. In England the higher class looks upon the next lower as the teetotaller looks upon beer, the vegetarian upon beef, or the Sabbatarian upon what they call the Continental Sunday.

"Moreover, there is in England, in addition to the science of zoology or botany, such as my hearer Aristotle founded it, a social zoology and botany, treating of such animals and plants as cannot, according to English class Puritanism, be offered to one's friends at meals. Thus, mussels and cockles are socially ostracised, except in unrecognisable form; bread is offered in homoeopathic doses; beer at a banquet is simply impossible; black radishes, a personal insult.

"In the same way, streets, squares, halls, theatres, watering-places--in short, everything in the material universe is or is not 'class'; that is, it is subject or not subject to social Puritanism. All this, as in the case of the Hebrews, who have an infinitely developed ritualism of eatables and drinkables, of things 'pure' or 'impure'; all this, I say, is the inevitable consequence of the unwillingness of the English to grant any considerable coercive power to the State, the Church, the nobility, the army, or any other organised corporate institution.

"They hate the idea of conscription, because they hate to give power to the army, and prefer to fall into the snares of faddists.

"The coercive power which they will not grant in one form, they must necessarily admit in another form. They destroy Puritanism as wielded by State or Church, and must therefore, since coercive powers are always indispensable, accept it as Puritanism of fads.

"What are the Jews other than a nation of extreme faddists? Being quite apolitical, as we call it, they must necessarily be extremely Orphic--that is, extreme Puritans.

"Political liberty is bought at the expense of social freedom. Nobody dares to give himself freely and naively; he must needs watch with sickly self-consciousness over every word or act of his, as a policeman watches over the traffic of streets. And lest he betray his real sentiments, he suppresses all gestures, because gestures give one away at once. One cannot make a gesture of astonishment without being really astonished at all, and _vice versâ_.

"And so slowly, by degrees, the whole of the human capital is repressed, disguised, unhumanised, and, in a word, sacrificed at the altar of political liberty.

"The Romans, much wiser than the Spartans, gave immense coercive power both to corporate bodies, such as the Roman Senate, and to single officials, such as a Consul, a Censor, a Tribune, or a Prætor. They therefore did not need any grotesque private coercive institutions or fads.

"The English, on the other hand, want to wield such an empire as the Roman, and yet build up their polity upon the narrow plane of a Spartan ἁγωγἡ. In this there is an inherent contradiction. They hamper their best intentions, and must at all times, and against their better convictions, legislate for faddists, because they lack the courage of their Imperial mission.

"Empires want Imperial institutions, that is, such as are richly endowed in point of political power. Offices ought to be given by appointment, and not by competitive examinations, if only for five or ten years. The police ought to have a very much more comprehensive power, and the schools ought to be subject to a national committee. Parliament must be Imperial, and not only British. Very much more might be said about the necessity of rendering this Realm more _apotelestic_, as we have called it, but I see that Euripides is burning to make his remarks, and I am sure that he is able to give us the final expression of the whole difficulty in a manner that none of us can rival."

* * * * *

Thereupon Euripides addressed the company as follows:

"For many, many a year I have observed and studied the most life-endowed commonwealth that the world has ever seen, Athens. I watched the Athenians in their homes, in the market-place, in the law courts, in peace and war, in the theatre and in the temple, at the holy places of Eleusis and Delphi, their men as well as their women.

"Personally I long inclined towards a view of the world almost exclusively influenced by Apollo. I thought that as the sun is evidently the great life-giver of all existence, so light, reason, system, liberty, and consummately devised measures constitute the highest wisdom of the community.

"In all I wrote or said I worked for the great god of Light, and Reason, and Progress. I could not find words and phrases trenchant enough to express my disdain for sentiments and ideas discountenanced by Apollo. I persecuted and fiercely attacked all those dark, chthonic, and mysterious passions of which man is replete to overflowing. I hated Imperialism, I adored Liberty; I extolled Philosophy, and execrated Orphic ideas.

"But at last, when I had gone through the fearful experiences of the Peloponnesian War, with all its supreme glories and its unrelieved shames, I learned to think otherwise. I learned to see that as man has two souls in his breast, one celestial or Apollinic, the other terrestrial or Dionysiac, so there are two gods, and not one, that govern this sub-lunar world.

"The two are Apollo and Dionysus.

"One rules the world of light, of political power, of scientific reason, and of harmonious muses. The other is the god of unreason, of passion, and wild enthusiasm, of that unwieldy Heart of ours which is fuller of monsters, and also of precious pearls, than is the wide ocean.

"Unless in a given commonwealth the legislator wisely provides for the cult of both gods, in an orderly and public fashion, Dionysus or Apollo will take fearful revenge for the neglect they suffer at the hands of short-sighted statesmen and impudent unbelievers.

"In the course of our Great War we have come into contact and conflict with many a non-Greek nation, or people whom we rightly term Barbarians. For while some of them sedulously, perhaps over-zealously, worship Dionysus, they all ignore or scorn Apollo. The consequence is that the great god blinds them to their own advantages, robs them of light and moderation, and they prosper enduringly neither as builders of States nor as private citizens in their towns.

"For Apollo, like all the gods, is a severe god, and his bow he uses as unerringly as his lyre.

"It is even so with Dionysus.

"The nation that affects to despise him, speedily falls a wretched victim to his awful revenge. Instead of worshipping him openly and in public fashion, such a nation falls into grotesque and absurd eccentricities, that readily degenerate into poisonous vices, infesting every organ of the body politic and depriving social intercourse of all its charms. The Spartans, although they allowed their women a temporary cult of the god Dionysus, yet did not pay sufficient attention to him, worshipping mainly Apollo. They had, in consequence, to do much that tends to de-humanisation, and, while many admired them, no one loved them.

"It was this, my late and hard-won insight into the nature of man, which I wanted to articulate in the strongest fashion imaginable in my drama called the _Bacchæ_. I see with bitterness how little my commentators grasped the real mystery of my work. If Dionysus was to me only the symbol of wine and merrymaking, why should I have indulged in the gratuitous cruelty of punishing the neglect of Bacchus by the awful murder of a son-king at the hands of his own frenzied mother-queen? All my Hellenic sentiment of moderation shudders at such a ghastly exaggeration.

"Neither the myth nor my drama refers to wanton, barbarous bloodshed; and such scholars as assume archaic human sacrifices in honour of Dionysus, and 'survivals' thereof in Dionysiac rites, ought to be taken in hand by the god's own Mænads and suffer for their impudence.

"Human sacrifices indeed, but not such as are made by stabbing people with knives and bleeding them to physical death. Human sacrifices in the sense of a terrible loss of human capital, of a de-humanisation caused by the browbeating of the Heart--this and nothing else was the meaning of my drama.

"And what country is a fuller commentary on the truth of my _Bacchæ_ than England?

"Here is a country that, had Dionysus been properly worshipped by its people, might be the happiest, brightest of all nations, a model for all others, and living like the gods in perpetual bliss--that is, in perfect equilibrium of thought and action, reason and sentiment, beauty and moderation. They have done much and successfully for Pythian Apollo; they have established a solid fabric of Liberty and Imperial Power; various intellectual pursuits they have cultivated with glory; and in their pæans to Apollo they have shown exquisite beauties of expression and feeling.

"But Dionysus they persistently want to neglect, to discredit, to oust.

"Instead of bowing humbly and openly to the god of enthusiasm, of unreasoned lilt of sentiment and passion, and of the intense delight in all that lives and throbs and vibrates with pleasure and joy; they affect to suppress sentiments, to rein in all pleasures, and to cast a slur on joy.

"And then the god, seeing the scorn with which they treat him, avenges himself, and blinds and maddens them, as he did King Pentheus of Thebes, King Perseus of Argos, the daughters of Minyas of Orchomenos, Proitos of Tiryns, and so many others. The god Dionysus puts into their hearts absurd thoughts and fantastic prejudices, and some of them spend millions of money a year to stop the use of the Bacchic gifts in a country which has long been the least drinking country in the white world, and as a matter of fact drinks far too little good and noble wine.

"Others again are made by angry Dionysus to μαἱνεσθαι or rage by adding to the 250 unofficial yearly fogs of the country, fifty-two official ones, which they call Sundays.

"Again others, instigated by the enraged god Dionysus, drive people to furor by their intolerable declamations against alleged cruelties to animals, while they are themselves full of cruel boredom to human beings.

"There is, I note with satisfaction, one among them who seems to have an inkling of the anger of the god, and who has tried to restore, in a fashion, the cult of Dionysiac festivals.

"He calls his Orphic Association the Salvation Army.

"They imitate not quite unsuccessfully the doings of the legs and feet of the true worshippers of Dionysus; but the spirit of the true cult is very far off from them.

"And so Dionysus, ignored and looked down upon by the people of this country, avenges himself in a manner the upshot and sum of which is not inadequately represented in my _Bacchæ_.

"And yet the example of the Hellas of Hellas, or of the town of Athens, which all of them study in their schools, might have taught them better things.

"When, by about the eighth or seventh century B.C. (as they say), the cult of Dionysus began to spread in Greece, the various States opposed it at first with all their power. All these States were Apollinic contrivances. They were ordered by reasoned constitutions, generally by one man. In them everything was deliberately arranged for light, order, good rhythm, clearness, and system. It was all in honour of Apollo, the city-builder. Naturally the leaders of those States hated Dionysus.

"However, they were soon convinced of the might of the new god, and, instead of scorning, defying or neglecting him, the wise men at the head of affairs resolved to adopt him officially. In this they followed (O Trichas, did they not?) the example of Delphi, which, although formerly purely Apollinic, now readily opened its holy halls to the new god Dionysus, so that ever after Delphi was as much Dionysiac as it was Apollinic.

"At Athens they honoured the new god so deeply and fully that, not content with the ordinary rural sports and processions given in his honour, the Athenians created the great Tragedy and Comedy as a fit cult of the mighty god. The Athenians were paid to go to those wondrous plays, where their Dionysiac soul could and did find ample food, and was thereby purged and purified, or, in other words, prevented from falling into the snares of silly faddists of religious or other impostures. But for those Dionysiac festivals in addition to the cult of Apollo, the Greeks would have become the Chinese of Europe.

"Why, then, do not the English do likewise? Why do they not build a mighty, State-kept theatre, or several of them? Why does their State try to pension decrepit persons, and not rather help to balance young minds? Why have they no public _agones_ or competitions in singing, reciting, and dancing? They do officially, next to nothing for music; and if one of their _strategi_ or ministers was known to be a good pianist or violinist, as they call their instruments, they would scorn him as unworthy of his post. Yet few of such _strategi_ are the equals of Epaminondas, who excelled both in dancing and playing our harp.

"But while they ignore music--that is, Dionysus' chief gift--they crouch before the unharmonious clamour of any wretched Orphic teetotaller, vegetarian, or Sabbatarian.

"This is how Dionysus avenges himself.

"I see how uneasy they are with regard to the great might of the Germans. Why, then, do they not learn to respect Dionysus, who was the chief help to the powerful consolidation of the German Empire? German music kept North and South Germans intimately together; it saved them from wasting untold sums of money, of time, of force, on arid fads; it paved the way to political intimacy.

"Had the English not neglected Dionysus, had they sung in his honour those soul-attaching songs which once learned in youth can never be forgotten, they might have retained the millions of Irishmen, who have left their shores, by the heart-melting charm of a common music. From the lack of such a delicate but enduring tie, the Irish had to be held by sterile political measures only.

"In music there is infinitely more than a mere tinkling of rhythm; there is Dionysus in it. Their teachers of politics sneer at Aristotle because he treats solemnly of music in his 'Politics.' But Aristotle told me himself that he sneers at them, seeing what absurd socialistic schemes they discuss because they do not want to steady the souls of their people by a proper cult of Dionysus.

"Socialism is doomed to the fate of Pentheus at the terrible hands of Dionysus. Socialism despises Dionysus; the god will speedily drive it to madness.

"See, friends, we must leave--yonder Apollo is rising; he wants to join Dionysus, who passed us a little while ago. Should both stay in this country, and should they both be properly worshipped, we might from time to time come back again. At present I propose to leave forthwith for the Castalian springs."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Reprinted, with permission, from the _Nineteenth Century and After_ for July 1908.]

THE SEVENTH NIGHT

SOCRATES, DIOGENES, AND PLATO ON RELIGION

During the seventh night the gods and heroes met again at Rome in the Coliseum. The splendid moon hung deep from the sky like a huge lantern, and shed her mild and plaintive rays over all the immense building. The immortals, in their light dresses and lighter movements, formed a gorgeous contrast to the sombre stones of the vast edifice. When all had taken their seats, Zeus rose in all his majesty and spake:

"Gods and heroes! We have derived much exquisite distraction from the stories of Alcibiades, Diogenes, Plato, Aristotle, Columbus and Cæsar about the various features of lay-life in England. If now I call upon you, Socrates, to tell us something about the religious life of the English, it is, I need hardly assure you, not in a spirit of mockery that I do so. What we here think about it all, we know, and need not utter it. When Athena in her indignation more than once asked me to hurl my lightning into her former abode at Athens, into the remains of the Parthenon, I told her something in secret--she knows what,--and did not touch the holy temple. Even so shall I deal with the temples of the little ones. We shall listen to you, Socrates, with sympathy and attention."

Up rose the sturdy figure of the sage. His features had become even more illuminated with humanity, and thus more divine, and over his face erred a mild smile. He spoke as follows:

"O Zeus and the other gods and heroes! In my mortal time I frequently listened to the marvellous stories of Herodotus, and while I never permitted myself to question his honesty, as later on Plutarch did, yet I could not help doubting some of his tales about the religions of the various peoples he describes. Had I then known and learnt what I have learnt since in England, I should not have felt the slightest doubt regarding his statements.

"I had been in England for some time before I began to understand something of their curious religions. For, they have not one religion, but quite a number of such. At first I thought they had different religions according to the boundaries of their different counties. I fancied that such a neat geographical distribution might render the whole matter more methodic. But I found that that was not the case. In the same way I tried to find out whether their religions were not distributed according to their sixty different social classes. This too did not work. I then tried their professions; after that, their dress; after that, their income-tax; then, their private games.

"In that way I finally came to reach the true lines of cleavage between their numerous religions. For, to put it briefly, their religions are parallel to and dependent on each man's hobbies.

"If, for instance, an Englishman dislikes wine, and thus leans towards Puritanic ideas, he will be much inclined to adopt the religion of one Calvin, who taught to enjoy life by killing all its joys.

"Another Englishman, being very partial to tobacco and to smoking, will have a natural bent towards the High Church, in which much incense is burnt and much smoke produced.

"Another, being very methodical and punctilious, will regard Methodism with much sympathy.

"A fourth, being afflicted with great susceptibility to moral shocks, goes among the Quakers.

"In that way I began to feel my way through the maze of their religions. The strangest thing, however, was that all these multifarious believers staunchly maintained that they took their divergent creeds from one and the same book: from the Bible. In that respect they reminded me of my whilom adversaries at Athens, the Sophists, who could prove the pro and con of any given assertion with equal volubility.

"In order to imbue myself fully with the spirit of their beliefs, I frequently went to church on Sundays.

"To be quite frank, I do not very well see why in England they call that day a Sunday. There is no sun in it, and otherwise it resembles night more than anything else. It ought to be called Un-day. I concluded that everything arranged for that day was done in order to bring out its resemblance to night ever so strongly. Thus, lest people should forego sleep on that drowsy day, the people of England have introduced thousands of soporifics in the shape of sermons. What other use that drug may have I could never see.

"To me as an old Hellene it seemed a thing quite beyond comprehension, why people should go out of their way to salary a person for making them feel creepy at the same place, and on the same day of the week, by repeating the same admonitions in nearly the same words hundreds of times a year. Evidently their lives on the other days of the week are so spiritless, dull and dry, that they want to get at least on Sundays some moral hair-friction with spiritual _eau de Cologne_. We Hellenes never thought of doing such things. It would have struck us as a personal insult to suppose that we needed such perpetual moralisation at stated times.

"Hippocrates told me that some constitutions do need the constant use of purgative waters. But do all people suffer from ethical constipation?

"I could not help smiling at the idea of my preaching like that to the Athenians of my time. They would have handed me the goblet with hemlock long before they did do it. Each householder would have considered my pretensions to moralise them as a slander on his private life. Each of them tried to make his own house a chapel full of constantly practised piety, dutifulness, and humanity. What need had he of my sermons? When he joined the great festivals of the city, it was to do his duty by the other Athenians, just as he joined the army on land, or the navy on sea, for the same purpose.

"We knew of no dogmas. We did not think that a man need stake all his soul on the belief in certain abstract dogmas. If he did not feel inclined to linger on one story told of Zeus, he might lovingly dwell on any other of the numberless stories told of him. If some said that Zeus was born in Crete, others maintained that he was born elsewhere. It seemed to us immaterial whether this fact or that was or was not historically exact.

"Not so the little ones. For them religion is viewed as a matter of documentary evidence, like a bill of sale. They constantly clamour for 'evidence,' 'proofs' and 'verifications.' Their theologians are solicitors and barristers, but not religious men. If I had asked Pericles for 'evidences' of the religious cult practised by his family or _gens_, the Alcmæonidæ, he would have indignantly told his slaves to put me out of the house, just as if I had asked him to give me 'evidences' of his wife's virtue.

"We held that Religion is not a matter of 'evidences,' any more than Life, Health, Sleep, or Dreams stand in need of being 'proved' by 'evidences.' We know that we live, or that we are in good health; we do not care to listen to long-winded arguments proving it.

"On my rambles in England I met many a clergyman. I remember one who occupied a high position at Canterbury, and was a very learned man. I was rather curious to learn what he thought of the religion of the Greeks. He treated me to the following remarks:

"'The Religion of the Greeks? Why, my dear sir, they had none. The Greeks were pagans, heathens. They believed in all sorts of immoral stories about immoral gods and goddesses; they were sunk in wholesale corruption and rottenness. Their vices smelt to heaven. Did ever any Greek say that he who smiteth you on your left cheek, ought to be offered your right cheek too?'

"'No,' I said, continued Socrates, 'we never said that, because we knew that nobody would ever do it. We did so many noble actions at home and in war that we never felt the urgency of exaggerating actions in words, that we never did in fact.'

"'Is that it?' he answered. 'Do you mean to say that we only say such things, because we never practise them?'

"'Precisely,' said I. '"Incapable of the deed, you try to embrace its shadow, the word," as Democritus said.'

"'Even if we never practised them, is it not sublime to say them? Is it not increasing our moral worth when we profess to be gentle and generous and superhumanly good, not exactly on the day when we make such professions, but possibly on some subsequent day?'

"'I am afraid,' said I, 'this we used to call the talk of sycophants and hypocrites.'

"'But for my Religion, sir, I should reply in very offensive terms. We are no hypocrites. We believe what we say, and all that is required is to believe. We do not trouble about the application of our beliefs, any more than the mathematician troubles about the practical application of his theorems.'

"'This is my very objection to your belief. Religion is not a theorem but an action, an active sentiment. Our religion was like our language: all active verbs, all movement and energy, all expression and sentiment, but no theorems.'

"'But just look at the superstition and downright fiction in all your mythology! Who has ever seen Apollo, Dionysus, the Graces, Aphrodite, or any other of your numberless gods? They are all mere phantasies, meant to amuse, but not to elevate. They belong to the infancy of the religious sentiment, and are only a more artistic form of Fetishism.'

"'I quite believe you,' I said, 'that you never met the Graces, nor Aphrodite. Perhaps they avoided you as carefully as you did them.'

"'Sir, this is frivolous. In our Religion there is nothing frivolous. Allow me to be quite frank with you. It is stated that you confessed to having felt the touch of some Phryne's beautiful hand on your shoulder for several days. Sir, this characterises you, and all the heathen Greeks. My mind staggers at the idea that one of our bishops should ever confess to such a frivolous sentiment. We too have shoulders; and there are still alas! Phrynes amongst us. But none of our class would ever confess to having felt what you admitted to have felt. There you have precisely the difference between you and us.'

"'You are ashamed of your humanity, and we were not; this is the whole difference. We were so full of our humanity, that we humanised even our gods. You are so ashamed of your humanity, that you de-humanise and supra-humanise your god.'

"'Disgraceful, sir, most disgraceful. Our humanity is _in_ God!'

"'And only in Him; so that none is left in you.'

"At these words," continued Socrates, "the man left me.

"A few days later I was at a place which they call Oxford, and where dwell and teach many of their Sophists. A young man is there taught to assume that callous look which is very imposing to Hindoos and negroes. Nothing surprises him, as nothing stirs him, except the latest shape of a cuff or a collar. He becomes in due time a curious blend of a monk, a fop, and a pedant.

"I was led to one of the most renowned of their theologians, whose name in our language means a coachman. He received me with a curious smile. Before I could say anything he spoke as follows:

"'I understand, sir, that you pose as the late Socrates. Well, well--come, come! I must tell you in confidence that I, being a higher critic, am a perfect adept in the great science of the vanishing trick. Suppose you bring forward a famous personage of history, and want him to disappear. Nothing is easier to me. I ask the man first of all very simple questions, such as:

"'Who asked him to exist?

"'Why did he choose his mother in preference to many other able women?

"'What made him prefer his father to so many other capable men?

"'For what reason did he fix his particular place of birth, let alone the time of the year, month, week and day where and when he was born?

"'What motive had he in filling the air with his screamings soon after his birth?

"'Could he give any satisfactory explanation of his various illnesses as a child? That is, whether he had measles and whooping-cough out of malice prepense, out of cussedness, or out of any hopes of receiving more attention?

"'When the man cannot satisfactorily answer these clear and positive questions, I put him down first as a suspect. Then I proceed to further questions.

"'If he is said to have won a battle, I ask him why he fought it on land and not on sea? Or _vice versâ_.

"'Why he did not, while fighting the battle, accurately determine the degrees of longitude and latitude of the locality of the battle?

"'Or why his chief general's name began with an L and not with an S?

"'If he is said to have been an ancient legislator, I ask him why he took his laws from his neighbours?

"'What mode of registration and publication of the law he observed?

"'Whether the paper of his code was hand-made, or wood-pulp?

"'Whether the water-marks on it were original or were imitations?

"'Whether he used ink or paint?

"'Whether he wrote them standing or sitting?

"'Whether he used the same pen for writing his nouns and verbs? Or whether he had different pens for the different parts of speech?

"'Whether he really knew what a noun was? Whether he liked male terminations, or preferred to revel in female endings? Whether he was not prejudiced against pronouns, or felt an idiosyncracy against the letters b, k, and z?

"'If the man cannot satisfactorily answer all these pertinent questions, I declare him to be a fraud. I tell him straight into his face that he never existed, and then I revile him as a low character for pretending an existence that is totally unfounded. Now, as to your case. You say, you are Socrates. Can you answer any of the questions I enumerated? Let us take the first question: "Who asked you to exist?"'

"'Athens, I presume,' said Socrates.

"'Athens? To dispose of this answer, we must first of all see whether Athens existed. I put it to you, sir, can you prove that Athens existed?'

"'I can; for, it still exists.'

"'Note the glaring fallacy! A thing that now exists, now, that is, on the brink of the present and the future, can that be said to have _eo ipso_ existed in the past? I put it to you most seriously, is the brink of the present, the past? Is the brink of the future, the past? Can, then, the brink of the present _and_ the future be called the past? Athens may have existed. That is, a number of houses and streets, once called Athens, may have existed. But can you say, I put it to you most mostly, can you say that the houses of Athens asked you to exist? Or did the streets do so?'

"'By Athens we mean the Athenians.'

"'Oh, I see, the Athenians. Who were they? Two-thirds were foreign slaves; one-fifth were _metiks_, that is, denizens of foreign extraction. Consequently, two-thirds and one-fifth being thirteen-fifteenths, the overwhelming majority of the town being _uitlanders_, you cannot possibly be said to have been asked into existence by them. Remain two-fifteenths of Athenians proper. Of these the great majority were your enemies, who drove you into death. Can they, who furiously clamoured for your death, be said to have violently wished for your birth?

"'Remain, therefore, only a handful of Athenians who _may_ have desired you to exist. How could they give due expression to their wish? In the Assembly matters were decided by a majority, which they did not control. In the law courts were hundreds, nay thousands of judges in each case, of whom, as _per supra_, the great majority were your enemies, who would have decided against your birth. In the Temples such decisions were never taken.

"'The intention of your prenatal friends could thus remain but a mere private wish of a few citizens, but could not possibly be an inherent tendency or desire of Athens. _Quod erat demonstrandum._ And since you have been unable to give a satisfactory answer to the first of the crucial questions, I put you down as a suspect.'

"I did not say anything," said Socrates. "I was amazed beyond expression that such nonsense could be allowed to pose as searching and 'scientific' analysis of facts. But he triumphantly continued:

"'You say nothing? _Qui tacet consentire videtur_,--silence means consent. I can see in your face how overawed you are by my sagacity, I have unmasked you. We unmask everything and anything. We unmask stones, pyramids, crocodiles, ichneumons, princes, kings, prophets, and heroes. We strike terror into the common people by our vast erudition and our penetrating sagacity.

"'We are the Sherlock Holmes of theology.

"'We run down any pretender, any scribe, any man who has the impudence of posing as a somebody. Given that we are not much; how can he be anything?

"'If you will stay here for some time, you will soon know a lot about what did not happen in ancient Israel.

"'Oxford is the Scotland Yard of all those humbugs that pass by the name of Abraham, Moses, King David, Samson, the Prophets, and other impostors. We have pin-pricked them out of existence!

"'At present we have proved that all the Religion of Israel was stolen from Babylon. In a few years we shall prove that the Babylonians stole it all from the Elamites, farther east. This, once well established, will give us a welcome means of proving that the Elamites stole it all from the Thibetans; who stole it from the Chinese; who stole it from the Japanese; who stole it from the Redskins in America; who stole it from the Yankees; who stole it from Oxford. And so we shall return to this great University and provide occupation and fame for the higher critics of the next three hundred years. Where are you now, O Pseudo-Socrates?'

"I was unable to say a word for some time. When I collected myself to a certain extent, I said:

"'O Sophist, if our Religion in ancient Greece had had no other advantage than that of saving us from the works of "higher critics," it has deserved well of us. We were immune from that disease, at any rate. Dion of Prusa and others wrote declamations against the historicity of the Trojan War; but nobody took them for more than what they were, for rhetorical exercises. No Hellene would have paid the slightest attention, nor accorded the slightest recognition to men like yourself. The English must be suffering from very ugly religious crochets and spiritual eczemas, to have recourse to drugs and pills offered by such medicine-men.'

* * * * *

"Other friends in England to whom I expressed my profound aversion to this puny scepticism in matters of Religion, advised me to attend the sermons given by a relatively young man with white hair in a temple in the city. They said that in him and his addresses there was religious sentiment. I accepted their advice and went repeatedly to hear what was called _The New Religion_.

"The young man talked well and impressively. He told them that two and two made four, and absolutely refused to make five.

"With much emphasis he declared that he could not believe in miracles, because of the miraculous way in which they happened. If, he said, a miracle should happen in an orderly fashion, performed under police revision, say, in Regent Street in front of Peter Robinson's, the arrangement and whole sequence of the procedure being duly anticipated and announced by the _Daily Nail_ or the _Daily X-Rays_, then indeed he would say: 'O Lord, O Lord, I am convinced.'

"'But,' the white-haired young man said, 'how can you, the rest of the world, or anyone else suppose that I could believe a miracle, that pops in from mid-air, in the most disorderly and unreasonable fashion, without having given notice either to the police or to the editor of the _Daily Nail_ or the _Daily X-Rays_?

"'Such a miracle is a mere vagrant, a loafer, a _déclassé_ or _déraciné_, as we say in Burmese. It has neither documents to legitimate itself with, nor any decent social connections. It disturbs the professor of physics at that great seat of untaught knowledge, the London University; it annoys all chemists, and confirms my colleagues in the other pulpits in their preposterous superstitions.

"'My brethren and _sithren_, I tell you there are no miracles; there never were any; there never can be any. Just let me tell you an interesting experience I had the other day with a man who travelled in the south of France, a country which, but for the fact that England is good enough to patronise her, would long since have disappeared from the surface of this or any other planet.

"'The gentleman in question spoke of Lourdes, and the miracles he had seen there. I listened for a while with patience; at last I could bear it no longer, and the following dialogue arose between us:

"He: '"Lourdes is the most convincing case of the miraculous power of the true Church."

"I: '"The true Church is in the city of London, sir, and there is no miracle going on there whatever."

"He: '"I completely differ, especially if, for argument's sake, I accept your statement that the temple in the city is the true Church. If that be so, then the miracles wrought there are even greater than those observable at Lourdes."

"I: '"I thank you for your rapid conversion. I am glad to see that you feel the power of my Church. This power comes from the great truths I teach. But as to miracles proper, I must, if reluctantly, decline the honour. I repeat it, there are no miracles in my Church, neither taught nor wrought."

"He: '"Come, come! Not only are there miracles in your Church, but they are also of the very same type that I noted at Lourdes."

"I: '"Sir, how can you insult me so gratuitously? Lourdes swarms with so-called miracles, which are no miracles at all, but only the effects of auto-hypnotisation. A person who can believe in the healing power of St ----"

"He: '"Steady, steady, my dear sir. I do not allude to that healing power at all. Again, placing myself on your standpoint, I will, for argument's sake, admit that the waters at Lourdes have no miraculous healing power owing to the influence of this saint or that. You might permit me to remark, nevertheless, that it is just as much of a miracle as when the drugs prescribed by our doctors happen to cure us. For, what could be more miraculous than that? But this is only by the way. I allude to quite another miracle, and I can only express my amazement that you do not guess it more quickly."

"I: '"I am quite out of touch with miracles."

"He: '"Bravo! This is precisely what the great Lessing used to say: the greatest of all miracles is the one that people do not notice as such at all. Just consider: do you not draw vast masses of people to your sermons? Have you not persuaded most of them that you have founded a new Religion? What on earth could be more miraculous than that!

"'"In your sermons you dance on a thin rope of logic made out of the guts of a few anæmic cats dropped from the dissecting table of science. If therefore you had won a reputation as a rope-dancer, one could readily understand it. But you have won the reputation of a founder of a new religion, which is to a logical rope what catguts are to a great violinist. Is that not marvellous? Savonarola would have charged you, at best, with blacking his shoes, and yet people take you for a modern Savonarola. Is that not marvellous? Is it anything short of a miracle? Is not this the very miracle of Lourdes? Hundreds of thousands of intelligent Frenchmen believe in the healing power of water in consequence of its canonisation by a saint. Is this not a miracle in our time?"

"I: '"If I am to be infinitely less worthy a man than Savonarola because I believe in the infinity and truth of Science, I gladly forego the honour. The more light we pour into the human heart, the nobler it will be."

"He: '"So you believe that your hearers follow you on account of the light you give them? Pray, abandon any such idea forthwith. They cling to you because of your interesting personality, and because you give satisfaction to their vanity. In persuading them that the life-blood of the 'old' Religion is mere stale water, they congratulate themselves on their being intellectually superior to the orthodox believers.

"'"Is there no one who has the courage to say aloud that the canker of all Religions in England is their constant toadying to Reason and Science? The theory of Evolution, first rightly condemned by the clergy, is now an established costume without which no bishop would dare to officiate in sermons or books. Naturalists all over the world lustily attack and combat Evolution; but no English clergyman ventures to doubt it. He will and must toady to what he thinks is 'Science.'

"'"Formerly Science was the _ancilla_, or maid of Theology; now Theology is the mere charwoman of any physiologist or biologist."

"I: '"And so it shall be. I see, my good man, I must talk to you a little more plainly. We theologians want nothing but authority. We have long since learned that this world is governed by authority, and by nothing else; just as is the next world, if there be any. Now, in former times Science was not imposing enough. Being, as it was, in its infancy, it had little authority. So we trampled upon it, and side-tracked it with disdain. At present, on the other hand, Science has become quite an influential member of society. It goes on doing marvellous things and inventing incredible feats of physical, chemical, or biological triumph.

"'"What is more natural than that we now not only receive the _homo novus_, the man of Science, but that we also try to avail ourselves of the authority his exploits give him?

"'"Take this nation. It is thoroughly materialist and on its knees before Science. For the last sixty years Science, and nothing but physical Science has been knocked into its head. This nation thinks that any study outside Science proper is pleasant humbugging. They are completely ignorant of human history. Give us Science! Give us facts, facts! Of course they say so, because facts save them the trouble of thinking, and do not allow one to pose as a thinker.

"'"Facts, scientific facts, that is all that they want. Human thought, they think, is a physical excretion from the brain, just as tears are from the lachrymal glands, or other liquids from the kidneys. Hence, they infer, all that is needed is to study, in a physiological laboratory, the brain.

"'"What's the use of literary history, for instance? If you want to know it, you have only to study the brain which is the cause of at least some portions of literature.

"'"What is the use of military history? Study, in a physiological laboratory, the arm, not arms; since it is the arm that fights.

"'"What is the use of Sociology, say, the study of the Family? Study, in a physiological laboratory, the nerves of certain organs which constitute the true cause of families. And similarly with all other studies relating to the humanities. Science; it is all a matter of Science proper."

"'Under these conditions,' the white-haired one continued, 'what can we do but take the requisite authority there where we find it best developed, in Science? Anything that pleases the _grand seigneur_, we hasten to acquiesce in while shoe-licking him. Science proper, that is, Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology disavow Imponderables, Tendencies, Present Projections of the Future, Incomprehensibles, etc., etc.; so do we.

"'Science cannot move from certain mathematical principles; speedily we too cry aloud that we cannot cease hugging these dear principles.

"'Science can never analyse or reconstrue the mystery of all mysteries: Personality; at once we novel theologians exclaim, beating our worn breasts, that Personality is no historic force at all.

"'Science cannot possibly so much as approach the problem of creativeness, creation, or origin of life; hence we gallop after it like newsboys, screaming at the top of our voices: "Latest news! No creation! No origins! Bill just passed! Enormous majority! One penny! Latest news!"

"'Cannot you see that? Can you not grasp that as in Republican countries we are Republicans, and in Monarchical ones, Monarchists; even so in an age overawed by the surface-scratchers of physical Science, we too must feel the itch and scratch away with violence?