CHAPTER II

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

[Sidenote: Migrations to the West.]

32. So far we have not met with any trace of direct antagonism between science and popular beliefs, though the views of the Milesian cosmologists were really as inconsistent with the religions of the people as with the mythology of the anthropomorphic poets.[169] Two things hastened the conflict—the shifting of the scene to the West, and the religious revival which swept over Hellas in the sixth century B.C.

Footnote 169:

For the theological views of Anaximander and Anaximenes, see § 22 and 30.

The chief figures in the philosophical history of the period were Pythagoras of Samos and Xenophanes of Kolophon. Both were Ionians by birth, and yet both spent the greater part of their lives in the West. We see from Herodotos how the Persian advance in Asia Minor occasioned a series of migrations to Sicily and Southern Italy;[170] and this, of course, made a great difference to philosophy as well as to religion. The new views had probably grown up so naturally and gradually in Ionia that the shock of conflict and reaction was avoided; but that could no longer be so, when they were transplanted to a region where men were wholly unprepared to receive them.

Footnote 170:

Cf. Herod. i. 170 (advice of Bias); vi. 22 sqq. (Kale Akte).

Another, though a somewhat later, effect of these migrations was to bring Science into contact with Rhetoric, one of the most characteristic products of Western Hellas. Already in Parmenides we may note the presence of that dialectical and controversial spirit which was destined to have so great an influence on Greek thought, and it was just this fusion of the art of arguing for victory with the search for truth that before long gave birth to Logic.

[Sidenote: The religious revival.]

33. Most important of all in its influence on philosophy was the religious revival which culminated about this time. The religion of continental Hellas had developed in a very different way from that of Ionia. In particular, the worship of Dionysos, which came from Thrace, and is barely mentioned in Homer, contained in germ a wholly new way of looking at man’s relation to the world. It would certainly be wrong to credit the Thracians themselves with any very exalted views; but there can be no doubt that, to the Greeks, the phenomenon of ecstasy suggested that the soul was something more than a feeble double of the self, and that it was only when “out of the body” it could show its true nature.[171] To a less extent, such ideas were also suggested by the worship of Demeter, whose mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis; though, in later days, these came to take the leading place in men’s minds. That was because they were incorporated in the public religion of Athens.

Footnote 171:

On all this, see Rohde, _Psyche_, pp. 327 sqq. It is probable that he exaggerated the degree to which these ideas were already developed among the Thracians, but the essential connexion of the new view of the soul with Northern worships is confirmed by the tradition over and over again.

Before the time with which we are dealing, tradition shows us dimly an age of inspired prophets—Bakides and Sibyls—followed by one of strange medicine-men like Abaris and Aristeas of Prokonnesos. With Epimenides of Crete, we touch the fringe of history, while Pherekydes of Syros is the contemporary of the early cosmologists, and we still have some fragments of his discourse. It looked as if Greek religion were about to enter upon the same stage as that already reached by the religions of the East; and, but for the rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked this tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were saved from a religion of the Oriental type by their having no priesthood; but this is to mistake the effect for the cause. Priesthoods do not make dogmas, though they preserve them once they are made; and in the earlier stages of their development, the Oriental peoples had no priesthoods either in the sense intended.[172] It was not so much the absence of a priesthood as the existence of the scientific schools that saved Greece.

Footnote 172:

See Meyer, _Gesch. des Alterth._ ii. § 461. The exaggerated rôle often attributed to priesthoods is a survival of French eighteenth century thinking.

[Sidenote: The Orphic religion.]

34. The new religion—for in one sense it was new, though in another as old as mankind—reached its highest point of development with the foundation of the Orphic communities. So far as we can see, the original home of these was Attika; but they spread with extraordinary rapidity, especially in Southern Italy and Sicily.[173] They were first of all associations for the worship of Dionysos; but they were distinguished by two features which were new among the Hellenes. They looked to a revelation as the source of religious authority, and they were organised as artificial communities. The poems which contained their theology were ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus, who had himself descended into Hades, and was therefore a safe guide through the perils which beset the disembodied soul in the next world. We have considerable remains of this literature, but they are mostly of late date, and cannot safely be used as evidence for the beliefs of the sixth century. We do know, however, that the leading ideas of Orphicism were quite early. A number of thin gold plates with Orphic verses inscribed on them have been discovered in Southern Italy;[174] and though these are somewhat later in date than the period with which we are dealing, they belong to the time when Orphicism was a living creed and not a fantastic revival. What can be made out from them as to the doctrine has a startling resemblance to the beliefs which were prevalent in India about the same time, though it seems impossible that there should have been any actual contact between India and Greece at this date. The main purpose of the _Orgia_[175] was to “purify” the believer’s soul, and so enable it to escape from the “wheel of birth,” and it was for the better attainment of this end that the Orphics were organised in communities. Religious associations must have been known to the Greeks from a fairly early date;[176] but the oldest of these were based, at least in theory, on the tie of kindred blood. What was new was the institution of communities to which any one might be admitted by initiation.[177] This was, in fact, the establishment of churches, though there is no evidence that these were connected with each other in such a way that we could rightly speak of them as a single church. The Pythagoreans came nearer to realising that.

Footnote 173:

See E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alterth._ ii. §§ 453-460, who rightly emphasises the fact that the Orphic theogony is the continuation of Hesiod’s work. As we have seen, some of it is even older than Hesiod.

Footnote 174:

For the gold plates of Thourioi and Petelia, see the Appendix to Miss Harrison’s _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, where the text of them is discussed and a translation given by Professor Gilbert Murray.

Footnote 175:

This was the oldest name for these “mysteries,” and it simply means “sacraments” (cf. ἔοργα). _Orgia_ are not necessarily “orgiastic.” That association of ideas merely comes from the fact that they belonged to the worship of Dionysos.

Footnote 176:

Herodotos mentions that Isagoras and those of his γένος worshipped the Karian Zeus (v. 66), and it is probable that the _Orgeones_ attached by Kleisthenes to the Attic _phratriai_ were associations of this kind. See Foucart, _Les associations religieuses chez les Grecs_.

Footnote 177:

A striking parallel is afforded to all this by what we are told in Robertson Smith’s _Religion of the Semites_, p. 339. “The leading feature that distinguished them” (the Semitic mysteries of the seventh century B.C.) “from the old public cults with which they came into competition, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments.”

[Sidenote: Philosophy as a Way of Life.]

35. We have to take account of the religious revival here, chiefly because it suggested the view that philosophy was above all a “way of life.” Science too was a “purification,” a means of escape from the “wheel.” This is the view expressed so strongly in Plato’s _Phaedo_, which was written under the influence of Pythagorean ideas.[178] Sokrates became to his followers the ideal “wise man,” and it was to this side of his personality the Cynics mainly attached themselves. From them proceeded the Stoic sage and the Christian saint, and also the whole brood of impostors whom Lucian has pilloried for our edification.[179] Saints and sages are apt to appear in questionable shapes, and Apollonios of Tyana showed in the end where this view may lead. It was not wholly absent from any Greek philosophy after the days of Pythagoras. Aristotle is as much possessed by it as any one, as we may see from the Tenth Book of the _Ethics_, and as we should see still more distinctly if we possessed such works as the _Protreptikos_ in their entirety.[180] Plato, indeed, tried to make the ideal wise man of service to the state and mankind by his doctrine of the philosopher king. It was he alone, so far as we know, that insisted on philosophers descending by turns into the cave from which they had been released and coming to the help of their former fellow-prisoners.[181] That was not, however, the view that prevailed, and the “wise man” became more and more detached from the world. Apollonios of Tyana was quite entitled to regard himself as the spiritual heir of Pythagoras; for the theurgy and thaumaturgy of the late Greek schools was but the fruit of the seed sown in the generation before the Persian Wars.

Footnote 178:

The _Phaedo_ is dedicated, as it were, to Echekrates and the Pythagorean society at Phleious, and it is evident that Plato in his youth was impressed by the religious side of Pythagoreanism, though the influence of Pythagorean science is not clearly marked till a later period. Note specially the ἄτραπος of _Phd._ 66 b 4. In _Rep._