Part 12

"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.